I'm reading the book. By 'realist', Smolin means that science shouldn't be satisfied with wave function collapse, which he nicely illustrates with Schrödinger's

I'm reading the book. By 'realist', Smolin means that science shouldn't be satisfied with wave function collapse, which he nicely illustrates with Schrödinger's thought experiment of a cat in box. He's not at all disputing that observations of quantum behavior are surprising and counter-intuitive, but he rejects interpretations that require us to distinguish "measurements from other processes in nature".