ABSTRACT

The question of the nature of matter is perhaps as old as humanity. Twenty-ve centuries ago, Thales of Miletus-the idealized Greek thinker credited by Aristotle as the founder of European philosophy-is believed to have posed that question. Clearly, discovering the hidden structure of nature constitutes one of the most basic reasons for our exploration of the world. Up to this point, we have occupied ourselves with the behavior of matter. We now turn our attention to the underlying structure of matter.