  After some historical remarks concerning Schroedinger's discovery of wave
mechanics, we present a unified formalism for the mathematical description of
classical and quantum-mechanical systems, utilizing elements of the theory of
operator algebras. We then review some basic aspects of quantum mechanics and,
in particular, of its interpretation. We attempt to clarify what Quantum
Mechanics tells us about Nature when appropriate experiments are made. We
discuss the importance of the mechanisms of "dephasing" and "decoherence" in
associating "facts" with possible events and rendering complementary possible
events mutually exclusive.
