The coming of a classical world

Quantum theory’s unusual predictions stem from its basic formalism which involves concepts like the wavefunction or probabilityamplitudes instead of probabilities. Many serious doubts have been raised about quantum theory’s connection with perceived classical dynamics. How does quantum mechanics, with all its strange ideas, unfold to give us the ‘reality’ of the familiar physical world? What is the connection between theclassical and thequantum! If quantum mechanics is, indeed, the fundamental theory of nature, as is widely accepted, then how does it explainclassicality! In the following, some of the fascinating conceptual problems of quantum mechanics are highlighted. The ‘environment-induceddecoherence’ approach is then discussed as one practical attempt at explaining the emergence of a classical world from an underlying quantum substrate