Why N*'s are Important

Abstract

The study of N*'s can provide us with critical insights into the nature of QCD in the confinement domain. The keys to progress in this domain are the identification of its important degrees of freedom and the effective forces between them. I report on the growing evidence in support of the flux tube model, and comment on the connection between this model and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, on the spin-dependence of the long-range confining potential, on the evidence for short-range one gluon exchange, on instantons, and on the one pion exchange model.