Mach's “History of Mechanics”

Abstract

Dover ed. Translation of: Histoire de la mécanique. Originally published in 1955. TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Hellenic science -- Alexandrian sources and Arabic manuscripts -- The XIIIth century. The school of Jordanus -- The XIVth century. The schools of Buridan and Albert of Saxony. Nicole Oresme and the Oxford school. -- XVth and XVIth centuries. The Italian school. Blasius of Parma. The Oxford tradition. Nicholas of Cues and Leonardo da Vinci. Nicholas Copernicus. The Italian and Parisian schoolmen of the XVIth century. Dominic Soto and the fall of bodies. -- XVIth century (continued). The Italian school of Nicholas Tartaglia and Bernardino Baldi -- XVIth century (continured). XVIIth century. Tycho-Brahe and Kepler. TABLE OF CONTENTS CONT'D -- Stevin's statics. Solomon of Caux -- Galileo and Torricelli -- Mersenne 1588-1648 as an international go-between in mechanics. Roberval 1602-1675 -- Descatres' mechanics. Pascal's hydrostatics -- The laws of impact (Wallis, Wren, Huyghens, Mariotte). The mechanics of Huyghens 1629-1697 -- Newton 1642-1727 -- Leibniz and living force -- The French-Italian school of Zacchi and Varignon -- Jean Bernoulli and the principle of virtual work 1717. Daniel Bernoulli and the composition of forces 1726 -- The controversy about living forces -- Euler and the mechanics of a particle 1736 -- Jacques Bernoulli and the centre of oscillation 1703. D'Alembert's treatise on dynamics 1743 -- The principle of least action -- Euler and the mechanics of solid bodies 1760 -- Clairaut and the fundamental law of hydrostatics. TABLE OF CONTENTS CONT'D -- Daniel Bernoulli's hydrodynamics. D'Alembert and the resistance of fluids. Euler's hydrodynamical equations. Borda and the losses of kinetic energy in fluids -- Experiments on the resistance of fluids (Borda, Bossut, Du Buat). Coulomb and the laws of friction -- Lazare Carnot's mechanics -- The mecanique analytique of Lagrange -- Laplace's mechanics 1799 -- Fourier and the principle of virtual works 1798 -- The principle of least restraint 1829 -- Relative motion : return to a principle of Clairaut. Coriolis' theorems. Foucault's experiments -- Poisson's theorem 1809 -- Analytical dynamics in the sense of Hamilton and Jacobi -- Navier's equations -- Cauchy and the finite deformation of continuous media -- Helmholtz and the energetic thesis discussion of the Newtonian principles (Saint-Venant, Reech, Kirchhoff, Mach, Hertz, Poincaré, Painlevé, Duhem. TABLE OF CONTENTS CONT'D -- Special relativity -- Generalised relativity -- The dynamics of quanta in Bohr's sense -- Wave mechanics in the sense of Louis de Broglie -- Quantum mechanics in the sense of Heisenberg and Dirac -- Development of the principles of quantum mechanics -- Discussion of the principles of quantum mechanics.