GOAL Expanded version

The goal of these lectures is to enable non-physicists to understand basic non-relativistic quantum mechanics for one to a few particles -- that is the quantum mechanics developed in the 1920s, something that has puzzled physicists and philosophers ever since.

Against this background, the lectures develop a philosophy of physics that enables a holistic view of nature even in spite of the rift which was introduced into physics with the development of quantum physics after 1926, when Schrödinger wrote down his famous equation. It also outlines an approach to overcoming the paradoxes of quantum physics.

The lecture defends the view that an understanding of the mesoscopic reality which dominates our lives outside the laboratory still has to be informed by common sense and classical physics. Quantum physics, in contrast, both as a theory and in practice (quantum engineering), depends heavily on the use of completely artificial settings. Insights of quantum physics, can for this reason be acquired only through highly specialized engineering and they can be utilized only for technical purposes: either in experiments, such as those performed at CERN, or in the engineering of devices such as the laser, the MRI and other quantum sensors, as well as quantum computers.