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Homological tools and ideas are pervasive in number theory. To defend this assertion, it suffices to evoke the role of étale cohomology in the study of the zeta functions of varieties over finite fields through the Weil conjectures, or the cohomological approach to class field theory formulated by Artin and Tate in the 1950's. The theory of motives, a manifestation of a universal cohomology theory attached to algebraic varieties, and the attendant motivic cohomology plays a central role in describing the special values of L-functions of varieties over number fields, via the conjectures of Deligne, Beilinson-Bloch, and Bloch-Kato. Much progress in the Langlands program exploits the fruitful connection between automorphic representations and the cohomology of associated Shimura varieties and more general arithmetic quotients of locally symmetric spaces. The study of special values of L-functions and the Langlands program, widely perceived as two fundamental yet seperate strands of the subject in the early 1990's, were beautifully unified in Wiles' epoch-making proof of the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture, in which this conjecture was reduced to a special instance of the Bloch-Kato conjecture for the symmetric square motive of an elliptic curve. Recent years have seen great strides in our understanding of the cohomology of the arithmetic quotients arising in the study of automorphic representations, spurred in part by the desire to extend the range of applicability of the celebrated Taylor-Wiles method. This has led to new automorphy and potential automorphy results: most spectacularly, perhaps, for abelian surfaces, as well as elliptic curves over general CM fields.