  Following Dyson's analogy between the quantum field theory and the
19th-century chemistry-both explain how but not why-one could also establish an
analogy between atomic physics and string theory. Atomic physics was needed to
answer the question why in chemistry, string theory is trying to answer the
question why in the standard model. This attempt is very briefly reviewed in
this talk. After discussing the phenomenological aspects of string theory, the
study of soft terms is emphasized as a possible connection between theory and
experiment. Special attention is paid to the issues of flavor changing neutral
currents, loop effects, charge and color breaking minima, and M-theory versus
weakly coupled string theory.
