Preface to the combined volume

In combining Parts 1 and 2 into a single volume only minor changes have
been made, apart from the correction of errors. I have not attempted to
bring the treatment up to date even for such rapidly expanding fields as
the study of chaos in non-linear systems, but have been content to add a
small number of references. Where an argument could be corrected, clarified
or extended in the space of a few sentences, these are signposted in the
margin and placed at the end of the chapter. The system of marginal
cross-references has met with critical approval and I have taken the oppor-
tunity of adding to their number.
My hopes of ever completing a further volume on the vibrations of
extended systems have by now grown faint. There are too many exciting
new ideas that are not yet ready for the type of exposition that suited the
present work. Fortunately the development, by both classical and quantal
methods, of the physics of simple vibrators produces a reasonably self-
contained argument, and I am grateful, as always, to Cambridge University
Press for making possible this synthesis of concepts which in modern physics
should be regarded always as complementary, never as antagonistic.

A. B. PIPPARD
Cambridge 1988

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