Pars L.A. A Treatise on Analytical Dynamics

Heinemann, 1965. - 661 pp., OCR.
The object of this book is to give a compact, consistent, and reasonably complete account of the subject as it now stands. The whole of analytical dynamics is based upon, and is developed from, the theorem of Lagrange that I call the fundamental equation. This result is established, after some necessary preliminary discussion, in Chapter III. The presentation of the subject that seems to be both the most elegant and the most powerful involves the translation of the fundamental equation into a number of different forms. It is this presentation that I follow in this book. Each of these various forms, six in all, has its own particular merits, and each is (I think) the right starting-point for some particular domain of the theory. I have taken pains to explain clearly the conditions for the validity of each of the six forms, and the context in which it is most valuable. If I seem to have been over-careful in these matters it is because of their vital importance to the comprehension of the subject as a whole. Moreover, when once they have been understood, the subject unfolds and blossoms in a simple and natural way.