Scaling, universality, and renormalization: Three pillars of modern critical phenomena

This brief overview is designed to introduce some of the advances that have occurred in our understanding of phase transitions and critical phenomena. The presentation is organized around three simple questions: (i) What are the basic phenomena under consideration? (ii) Why do we care? (iii) What do we actually do? To answer the third question, the author shall briefly review scaling, universality, and renormalization, three of the many important themes which have served to provide the framework of much of our current understanding of critical phenomena. The style is that of a colloquium, not that of a mini-review article. [S0034-6861 (99)02902-5].