  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.
