  An understanding of homogeneous nucleation of crystalline structure from a
disordered medium such as a liquid remains an important unsolved problem in
condensed matter physics. Guided by the results from a number of experiments on
granular and colloidal systems in the past two decades, including in particular
observations of homogeneous nucleation in colloidal and granular systems, we
suggest an alternative to the statistical mechanics approach to static granular
matter initiated by Edwards and Oakeshott in 1989.
