to the English translation of Lagrange's Mecanique Analytique Lagrange's Mecanique Analytique appeared early in 1788 almost exactly one cen tury after the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica. It marked the culmination of a line of research devoted to recasting Newton's synthetic, geomet ric methods in the analytic style of the Leibnizian calculus. Its sources extended well beyond the physics of central forces set forth in the Principia. Continental au thors such as Jakob Bernoulli, Daniel Bernoulli, Leonhard Euler, Alexis Clairaut and Jean d'Alembert had developed new concepts and...