Exploring quantum reality?

Twentieth-century physics bequeaths us an unruly enigma in the equivocal dichotomy between quantum and classical. Mesoscopic systems: which are they, or when? To some this distinction is but a matter of modeling convenience; to others, the partition bears ontological weight. Whichever one's stance, debates on this issue sharpen our introspection on “Why the quantum?” by demanding rigorous justification for choices of calculative consequence, intuitively made on every day in every field of physics.

The limits seem clear. For few particles, left to their own devices, quantum mechanics runs rampant with its nonclassical phenomenology, viz. superposition, tunneling, and entanglement. But for the largish objects of our everyday experience, the sensory familiarity of classical mechanics holds sway: each object has its (singular) place, and every obstacle must be gone round or over. Strange, then, to ponder how big things are made from small! Somehow the assemblage of perceivable matter inevitably converts quantum constituents to classical collective, as if the ordering of the universe were ruled by atoms' aversion to the public embarrassment of quantum behavior writ large. It's a shame in a sense, for the senses slighted of paranormal experience, but superposition … what would it look like anyway?