Wherefore Quantum Mechanics?

TL;DR

This paper argues that quantum mechanics is a human-made mathematical model and explores how features of our world lead to its development, emphasizing that quantization results in wave and statistical behaviors.

Contribution

It offers a perspective that quantum mechanics is a model reflecting our world, not an inherent truth, and explains how quantization influences wave and statistical phenomena.

Findings

Quantum mechanics is a human invention, not an absolute description.

Discrete quanta lead to wave and statistical behaviors.

The perspective shifts focus from theory implications to world features.

Abstract

After the development of a self-consistent quantum formalism nearly a century ago, there ensued a quest to understand the often counterintuitive predictions of the theory. These endeavors invariably begin with the assumption of the "truth" of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and then proceed to investigate the theory's implications for the physical world. One of the outcomes has been endless discussions of the quantum measurement problem, wave/particle duality, the non-locality of entangled quantum states, Schroedinger's cat, and other philosophical conundrums. In this essay, I take the point of view that quantum mechanics is a mathematical model, a human invention, and rather than pondering what the theory implies about our world, I consider the transposed question: what is it about our world that leads us to a quantum mechanical model of it? One consequence is the realization that discrete quanta, the quantum of action in particular, leads to the wave nature and statistical behavior of matter rather than the other way around.