History of classical mechanics
The critical historical event in classical mechanics was the publication by Isaac Newton of his laws of motion and his associated development of the mathematical techniques of calculus in 1678.
[1] Aristotle believed in logic and observation but it would be more than eighteen hundred years before Francis Bacon would first develop the scientific method of experimentation, which he called a vexation of nature.
As a result, he conceived of a natural order in which the motions of the heavens were necessarily perfect, in contrast to the terrestrial world of changing elements, where individuals come to be and pass away.
There is another tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks where mathematics is used to analyze bodies at rest or in motion, which may found as early as the work of some Pythagoreans.
Other examples of this tradition include Euclid (On the Balance), Archimedes (On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies), and Hero (Mechanica).
He said that an impetus is imparted to a projectile by the thrower, and viewed it as persistent, requiring external forces such as air resistance to dissipate it.
[8] In the 12th century, Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi adopted and modified Avicenna's theory on projectile motion.
[9] According to Shlomo Pines, al-Baghdaadi's theory of motion was "the oldest negation of Aristotle's fundamental dynamic law [namely, that a constant force produces a uniform motion], [and is thus an] anticipation in a vague fashion of the fundamental law of classical mechanics [namely, that a force applied continuously produces acceleration].
"[10] In the 14th century, French priest Jean Buridan developed the theory of impetus, with possible influence by Ibn Sina.
[12] Galileo Galilei's development of the telescope and his observations further challenged the idea that the heavens were made from a perfect, unchanging substance.
He formulated the conservation law for elastic collisions, produced the first theorems of centripetal force, and developed the dynamical theory of oscillating systems.
Newton and most of his contemporaries hoped that classical mechanics would be able to explain all entities, including (in the form of geometric optics) light.
The idea was articulated by Euler (1727), and in 1782 Giordano Riccati began to determine elasticity of some materials, followed by Thomas Young.
In the middle of the 19th century, Hamilton could claim classical mechanics as at the center of attention among scholars: "The theoretical development of the laws of motion of bodies is a problem of such interest and importance that it has engaged the attention of all the eminent mathematicians since the invention of the dynamics as a mathematical science by Galileo, and especially since the wonderful extension which was given to that science by Newton."
In the 1880s, while studying the three-body problem, Henri Poincaré found that there can be orbits that are nonperiodic, and yet not forever increasing nor approaching a fixed point.
Action at a distance was still a problem for electromagnetism and Newton's law of universal gravitation, these were temporary explained using aether theories.
[23] Following the introduction of general relativity, Élie Cartan in 1923 derived Newtonian gravitation from Einstein field equations.
He considered the problem of whether or not a small perturbation of a conservative dynamical system resulted in a quasiperiodic orbit in celestial mechanics.
