Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics
This textbook takes an innovative approach to the teaching of classical mechanics, emphasizing the development of general but practical intellectual tools to support the analysis of nonlinear Hamiltonian systems. The development is organized around a progressively more sophisticated analysis of particular natural systems and weaves examples throughout the presentation. Explorations of phenomena such as transitions to chaos, nonlinear resonances, and resonance overlap to help the student to develop appropriate analytic tools for understanding. Computational algorithms communicate methods used in the analysis of dynamical phenomena. Expressing the methods of mechanics in a computer language forces them to be unambiguous and computationally effective. Once formalized as a procedure, a mathematical idea also becomes a tool that can be used directly to compute results. (Publisher's Description)
Stats for nerds
42recommend
118mentions
92people
2008–2025years
41% recommend58% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- That's a good place to start but it's primarily about programming itself. In "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" and "Functional Differential Geometry" he applies his approach of using computer programs as a way of communicating concepts to humans to some fascinating maths and physics topics.
- The discussion in Sussman and Wisdom's "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics", about how the Euler-Lagrange equations don't literally make sense as traditionally written, has long resonated with me:
https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...
They also adopt a notation where partial derivatives are taken with respect to "argument slots".
- “Structure and interpretation of classical mechanics” by Sussman bridges this gap beautifully
- I don't know, but whenever I plead with people in computational science to read Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics I'm usually met with an eye-roll.
- Interesting. A couple similar books:
https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/d.j.n.vaneijck2/HR/ - The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming - Uses Haskell, as the title suggests
https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b... - The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics - Uses Scheme
- I am hoping this also opens up more opportunity to leverage Lisp's symbolic powers. I had great fun with Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (SICM), and recently a paper on analyzing music using symbolic regression [0], and another on symbolic regression with Lisp [1]. Julia and CL seem perfect for this with Mathematica as another option for quickly playing with ideas.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286905402_Symbolic_...
[1] https://towardsdatascience.com/symbolic-regression-the-forgo...
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