My thoughts on truthmakers have only developed slowly. A brilliant shaft of light from Charlie Martin introduced me to the notion many years ago, but it took me a long time to understand the full implications of his idea. And only since 1997 have I put truthmaking itself at the centre of my work on metaphysics.

The concept of truthmaking has become widely diffused throughout the Australian philosophical community, and I am conscious of debts to John Bigelow, John Fox, Frank Jackson, George Molnar, Daniel Nolan, Greg Restall and probably others who have helped to create a climate of thought. In the meanwhile the same enterprise, and – rather wonderfully – the very same word, came to birth in the other hemisphere in a seminal 1984 article by Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith. Their subsequent work has since flowed together with the thinking that Martin taught, to the enrichment of us all. In England mention should be made of Hugh Mellor and his students. And in 2002 a conference on the topic of truthmakers was held in Manchester, one that I had the pleasure of attending. Martin returned to North America after some years at Adelaide and then Sydney, settling in the University of Calgary, from where his insistence on truthmakers had influence on a number of persons in the US and Canada, notably John Heil. I thank him for his help with this book.