[Panoramix]

I'm not sure I really "get" the 400 year old physics. Things like the Lagrangian, Lagrangian transform, and the principle of least action and the Hamiltonian. I understand them on a superficial level and I know very well how to use them, but I just don't really get it. Why can we even write equations for this stuff. I have a degree in physics which makes it all the more depressing.

[marcosdumay]

> Why can we even write equations for this stuff.

It's a (very) weird way to write the same equations as Newton. It happens to be easier to solve on some cases, because calculus works like that.

It's conceptually not very different from using a Fourier or Laplace transformation to simplify some signal handling. But 400 years ago they didn't have any easy way to understand it, so it got an aura of magic that never got away.

(But you probably already know all that. You probably just didn't internalize it because of that aura.)

[pm3003]

Alexandre Koyré has written a book and a lot of articles about it (well-known are the Copernician and Gallilean moments), and it made me mostly realize how different their thinking could be. His works are sometimes hard to read because of the mathematics involved but also the extensive quoting in Italian, Latin, Greek etc (though with Google Lens it shouldn't be a problem in 2023).