A history of mechanics

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Авторы: RENE DUGAS

Издательство: ROUTLEDGE &KEGAN PAUL LTD.

Год: 1955

Кол-во страниц: 661

Формат: pdf

Размер: 62 Мб

Язык: english

The history of mechanics is one of the most important branches of the history of science. From earliest times man has sought to develop tools that would enable him to add to his power of action or to defend himself against the dangers threatening him. Thus he was unconsciously led to consider the problems of mechanics. So we see the first scholars of ancient times thinking about these problems and arriving more or less successfully at a solution. The motion of the stars which, from the Chaldean shepherds to the great Greek and Hellenistic astronomers, was one of the first preoccupations of human thought, led to the disc01Jery of the true laws of dynamics. As is well known, although the principles of statics had been correctly presented by the old scholars those ofdynamics, by the false conceptions of the aristotelian school, did not begin tq see light until the end ofthe Middle Ages and the beginning oftke modern era. Then came the rapid development of mechanics due to the memorable work of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Huyghens and Newton; the Modification of its laws by such men as Euler, Lagrange and Laplace; and• the tremendous development of its various branches and the endlessly increasing number of applications in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The