Szabò’s Geschichte der Mechanischen Prinzipien und Ihrer Wichtigsten Anwendungen (1979)

Abstract

For hundreds of years mechanics and physics were almost synonymous; through the middle of the nineteenth century a book of theoretical physics was more than half devoted to mechanics; and even today the disciplines of mechanics in elegant, precise mathematical statement abstract, sum, and correlate the greater part of the physics of ordinary phenomena on the human scale. Mathematical mechanics developed mainly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; mechanical phenomena dominated manufactures and much of everyday life during the following period of industrialization; the philosophies and many of the characteristic attitudes of the West reflect, whether in approbation or contest, mechanics in its universality and mathematical precision; modern life cannot be conceived except intertwined with use and abuse of mechanical principles. Yet general histories of science display such ignorance of mechanics as to give a false picture of science as a whole, and general histories of mechanics in detail or in depth have been few. The first, it seems, is provided by the historical sections Lagrange included in his Méchanique Analitique, 1788. Lagrange’s elegant conciseness and dry, impersonal tone have seduced generations of readers to regard his choice of material fair and his description of it accurate.