Since its inception in the first part of the 20th century quantum mechanics has been a continual source of bewilderment, mystification and philosophical confusion. It is often claimed, by physicists as well as by philosophers, that quantum mechanics is not understandable and that it does not or cannot describe physical reality. Such diagnosis lies at the root of various attempts to provide often quite bizarre alternatives as well as a widespread sense of defeatism and anti-realism in the philosophy of science. In this book it is argued that any such conclusions are not warrented, but actually rest on a number of very common and seductive fallacies and conceptual confusions central among which is the mixing up of physical realism with the reality-concept in classical physics. On the positive side the book sketches a realistic understanding of standard quantum mechanics, that is, it attempts to show that (and how) ordinary quantum mechanics without hidden variables, Many-worlds or any such things may be understood as a consistent and, in the proper sense, complete description of microphysical reality. Along the way it is argued, too, that the resulting Genuine Quantum Realism is fully consistent with Niels Bohr´s original, even though too often misunderstood, conception of quantum mechanical description of physical reality. The position developed here may, indeed, be seen as a rehabilitation and extension of the real Bohr point of view as purified from the traces of the various mis-representations called the ”Copenhagen interpretation”.
