The two papers in this booklet were originally presented at a Clark Library Seminar at UCLA. They concern the early development of solid state physics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first paper, by C.S. Smith, is titled The texture of matter as viewed by artisan, philosopher, and scientist in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author notes that the physics and chemistry of solids had been two aspects of the same thing in the minds of both artisans and philosophers. The revival of atomism and Descartes ideas stimulated great interest in the idea that properties of matter depended on the relationships of shaped parts. The work of R. A. F. de Reaumur brought together the artisan's observations of texture with the philosopher's speculations, yielding a structural model of matter that was useful in practice. Physicist explained freely growing crystals at the same time, but the insight was not then followed up. The ultimate recognition of hierarchy clarified the structure of matter, but more complex considerations of hierarchy will characterize science in the future. John G. Burke, in Snowflakes and the constitution of crystalline matter, notes that Kepler first speculated about the hexagonal symmetry of snowflakes. The seventeenth and eighteenth century witnessed a steady stream of speculation about the source of symmetry in crystals. Robert Hooke and Christian Huygens proposed that the regular geometry of all crystals originated in the configurations that contiguous spherical atoms could assume, but the idea that the basic building blocks of matter were spherical was strongly opposed. The history of early solid state physics underscores the importance of models to scientific advancement.