'Why are atoms so small?' asks 'naive physicist' in Erwin Schrodinger's book 'What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell'. 'The question is wrong' answers the author, 'the actual problem is why we are built of such an enormous number of these particles'. The idea that everything is built of atoms is quite an old one. It seems that l Democritus himself borrowed it from some obscure Phoenician source . The arguments for the existence of small indivisible units of matter were quite simple. 2 According to Lucretius observable matter would disappear by 'wear and tear' (the world exists...