Theoretical physics is presently at a very exciting time in the history of scientific discovery. For we are at a precipice facing two conflicting 20th century revolutionary movements in physics, each purporting to be basic truths of nature - the quantum theory and the theory of relativity. In the 20th century the mathematical expression of the quantum theory yielded correct predictions of a great deal of the data on the behavior of the molecular, atomic, nuelear and elementary partiele domains of matter. In the same period, the theory of relativity suc cessfully described new features of material systems. In special rela tivity, the relativistic Doppler effects (transverse and longitudinal) of electromagnetic radiation, and the mechanics of matter that moves at speeds elose to the speed of light, revealing, for example, the en 2 ergy mass relation, E = mc , revolutionized our thinking. In its form of general relativity, it has yielded a formalism that successfully pre dicted features of the phenomenon of gravity, also predicted by the elassical Newtonian theory, but in addition, features not predicted by the elassical theory, thereby superceding Newton's theory of universal gravitation. The problem we are now faced with, in these early decades of the 21st century, is that in their precise mathematical forms and their conceptual bases, the theory of relativity and the quantum theory are both logically and mathematically incompatible.

There exist essentially two levels of investigation in theoretical physics. One is primarily descriptive, concentrating as it does on useful phenomenological approaches toward the most economical classifications of large classes of experimental data on particular phenomena. The other, whose thrust is explanatory, has as its aim the formulation of those underlying hypotheses and their mathematical representations that are capable of furnishing, via deductive analysis, predictions - constituting the particulars of universals (the asserted laws)- about the phenomena under consideration. The two principal disciplines of contemporary theoretical physics - quantum theory and the theory of relativity - fall basically into these respective categories. General Relativity and Matter represents a bold attempt by its author to formulate, in as transparent and complete a way as possible, a fundamental theory of matter rooted in the theory of relativity - where the latter is viewed as providing an explanatory level of understanding for probing the fundamental nature ofmatter indomainsranging all the way fromfermis and lessto light years and more. We hasten to add that this assertion is not meant to imply that the author pretends with his theory to encompass all ofphysics or even a tiny part of the complete objective understanding of our accessible universe. But he does adopt the philosophy that underlying all natural phenomena there is a common conceptualbasis,and then proceeds to investigate how far such a unified viewcan take us at its present stage of development.

This monograph is a sequel to my earlier work, General Relativity and Matter [1], which will be referred to henceforth as GRM. The monograph, GRM, focuses on the full set of implications of General Relativity Theory, as a fundamental theory of matter in all domains, from elementary particle physics to cosmology. It is shown there to exhibit an explicit unification of the gravitational and electromagnetic fields of force with the inertial manifestations of matter, expressing the latter explicitly in terms of a covariant field theory within the structure of this general theory. This monograph will focus, primarily, on the special relativistic limit of the part of this general field theory of matter that deals with inertia, in the domain where quantum mechanics has been evoked in contemporary physics as a funda mental explanation for the behavior of elementary matter. Many of the results presented in this book are based on earlier published works in the journals, which will be listed in the Bibliography. These results will be presented here in an expanded form, with more discussion on the motivation and explanation for the theoretical development of the subject than space would allow in normal journal articles, and they will be presented in one place where there would then be a more unified and coherent explication of the subject.