Abstract
IT is rather curious that at the present time, when applied dynamics embraces so wide a range, so much attention should be directed to its foundations. One would have thought that the basis of a department of science which is used and used successfully in the investigation of the motion of vortex rings in a fluid, and the propagation of waves of electromagnetic disturbance, had been fully understood, and that no doubt of the firmness of the logical structure on which so huge a weight is laid, was entertained by those who are most active in turning it to practical account. If, as some appear to believe, our dynamical methods are founded on a vicious circle, how is it that the same men have been so successful in applying them to the elucidation of physical phenomena? Surely the repeated attempt to do this ought only to have led, if not to confusion of contradictory results, to continual failure to obtain any explanation at all.
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GRAY, A. The Foundations of Dynamics. Nature 49, 389–391 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/049389b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049389b0