Origins
Australian realism began after John Anderson accepted the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 1927. His students included philosophers such as John Passmore, J.L. Mackie, David Stove, Eugene Kamenka and David Malet Armstrong. Anderson viewed philosophy historically as a long argument beginning with Thales. Anderson proposed that there was nothing more to being than the spatio-temporal system and that a correct and coherent view of the world involved not only rejecting any sort of deity, but also the extraordinary entities postulated by so many philosophers, from at least the time of Plato to the present day.
Independently from the Andersonians, in Adelaide during the 1950s, the Mind-Brain Identity Theory was being developed by two former students of Gilbert Ryle, J. J. C. Smart (then Chair of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide) and Ullin Place.
Read more about this topic: Australian Realism
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