manik.banik@iisertvm.ac.

in [PHY111]

Note 1: Motivation
“History of science without philosophy of science is blind, philosophy of sci-
ence without history of science is empty.”–(Lakatos 1978, p. 1021 )

0.1 Introduction
Classical mechanics is the mathematical study of the motion of everyday ob-
jects. Motion are generally in accordance with some general principles/laws.
Classical mechanics is often called Newtonian mechanics since almost the en-
tire study is built on the seminal work of Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1726)2 . Of
course we should recall the other great pioneers, such as, Tycho Brahe (1546-
1601), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) whose
works built the foundations for Newton’s ‘the great unification’ of the (ellip-
tical) movements of the objects in celestial realm [outer space as observed in
astronomy] and parabolic movements of the bodies in terrestrial realm [on or
relating to the earth].
Various notions of classical mechanics – position, velocity, mass, energy,
force etc – have become the modes of our everyday thinking. In this course we
will devote some effort to critically examine these concepts. We also will spend
good amount of time to grasp some relevant mathematical language that will
become essential to understand many of the aforesaid physical concepts.
Every scientific theory starts from a set of hypotheses. These hypotheses
are built on our everyday observation of the natural world and presented in
an idealized form. [You may stop at this point for a moment! And try to
recall few such hypotheses at your own]. The theory is then tested by check-
ing the prediction deduced from these hypotheses against experiment. Upon
disagreement with the experimental results Scientists try to modify the hy-
potheses and accordingly the theory. When no serious disagreement appears
after a sufficiently large number of experiments, the hypotheses gradually
acquire the status of ‘laws of nature’.
In scientific philosophy, this process is often called Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis3 :
1
Lakatos, Imre. 1978. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
2
His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy) often referred to as simply the Principia is considered one of the most important works in the
history of science as it marked the epoch of a great revolution in physics
3
The methodology is inspired from the great German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770
– 1831) idea of Concrete-Abstract-Absolute
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ˆ Thesis: starting with the hypotheses (acquired from observation).

ˆ Antithesis: trying to contradict or negate the hypotheses with experi-

ments

ˆ Synthesis: resolving the conflict between the thesis and antithesis and
formulating the laws

However, it should be remembered that, no matter how impressive/ ob-

vious the laws may be, we can never claim them to be Absolute. We can
only claim that a particular law is applicable to a class of phenomenon we
studied and possibly for similar other phenomena. We should keep our mind
open that for newly observed phenomenon a well established law may not
be applicable anymore. In this regard I would like to recall two important
quotes:

What makes the pursuit of science so engrossing is to learn that one’s

most strongly held beliefs can be completely wrong. The search to identify
and correct the old errors can lead to deep insights into nature. The
world would be a far better place for all of us if this joy scientists find
in exposing their own misconceptions were more common in other areas
of human endeavor. — N. David Mermin (Cornell University)

Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theo-
ries rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles.
The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to
any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is
not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are
satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least
for the time being. — Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994)

Before starting some realistic classical systems, in the following we will try to
explore some toy examples.
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0.2 A bit warm-up with toy examples

0.2.1 A world with a single coin
The simplest scenario, we can consider is a world where there is only one coin
(see Fig.1). Of course you can think of a even simpler coin which has only

Figure 1: A two-faced coin. It can be in two distinct states: head (H) and
tail (T).

one face. But this one-faced coin is extremely dull as its state can not change
with time. However, for a two-faced coin we can think of some ‘dynamical
law’ that determines change of the states with time. To keep the scenario
simple let us consider time is parameterized by integer values (positive as
well as negative), i.e. t ∈ {· · · , −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, · · ·} ≡ I.
We can consider a particular law of evolution where the state of the coin
remain same with time (see Fig.2). Even though this dynamics is boring, it is

Figure 2: Constant law of evolution. If the coin state is initially H/T then
it remains H/T always, i.e time evolved states are either HHHHHHH· · · or
TTTTTTTT· · ·.
profound. It describe the state of the system in every time. We can, however,
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Figure 3: Flipped law: time evolved states are · · ·HTHTHTHT· · ·.

consider a bit interesting evolution law where state of the coin at any instance
is filliped version of its previous state (see Fig.3).
One can also represent the aforesaid evolution laws graphically (see Fig.4).
We can also represent the evolution laws in equation form. For that consider

Figure 4: Graphical representation of the evolution laws. The nodes denote

the states. Arrows indicates evolution of the states from initial one to final
one with respect to time.

a variable χ that takes values from the set {H, T }. We will denote H ≡
+1 & T ≡ −1. With this notation the constant evolution can be expressed
by the equation
χ(t + 1) = χ(t), ∀ t ∈ I & ∀ χ. (1)
In mathematics, the notation ∀ stands for the phrase ‘for all’. Similarly, the
flipped evolution can be expressed as,

χ(t + 1) = −χ(t), ∀ t ∈ I & ∀ χ. (2)

[Can you imagine some evolution law other than the constant evolution and
the flipped evolution for the above two-faced coin?]
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0.2.2 A world with a single die

Let us make our world little bit more interesting than the previous one. In-
stead of a single coin it is now consist of a single die (see Fig.5).

Figure 5: A die has six distinct states.

The system has six distinct states that can be denoted as i ∈ {1, 2, · · · , 6}.
Consider a evolution law (L1) given by 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 → 1 (see
Fig.6). A different evolution (L2) can be considered as 1 → 5 → 4 → 3 →

Figure 6: A die has six distinct states.

6 → 2 → 1 (see Fig. 6). However, there is no fundamental difference between

L1 and L2. That can be seen from Fig.6. Can’t there be fundamentally
different evolution law for this system? [Stop for a while! Try to give your
own thought.]
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Let us consider an evolution (L3) defined as 1 → 3 → 5 → 1 & 2 → 4 →

6 → 2 (see Fig.7).

Figure 7: Evolution law L1 is logically equivalent to the law L2.

Note that the evolution L3 is fundamentally different from the evolution

L1/L2. In fact evolution L3 is quite interesting. We can associate some
property with some fixed value for the states {1, 3, 5} while for the states
{2, 4, 6} that property has some different value [Later we will see that this
corresponds to some conserved quantity of the system]. In the present context
this property can be thought as oddness/evenness of the index associated with
the face of the die (more popular term for this is parity).
[Try to write down the Equations for the evolution(s) discussed for a die.]
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0.2.3 Disallowed evolution(s)

In the toy examples above we have discussed some allowed evolution laws.
We will now discuss some laws that are not allowed.
But, naturally the question arises: by whom the laws are disallowed?
For this toy example the obvious answer is they are disallowed by us. In a
realistic scenario, our observation about the physical phenomena motivates
us to disallow some particular laws.
A three-faced coin: Consider a coin with three face – head (H), tail
(T), and side (S) [You can try to listen the famous song ‘yeh dosti hum nahi
todenge..’ from the milestone Hindi movie ‘Sholay(1975)’. There you will
find an event of coin-tossing. Interestingly, the outcome of the coin-toss is
S, neither H nor T. Lesson: We can try to learn physics even from a movie
:). Try to solve the following problem: What should be the ratio between
radius and width of the Sholay-coin so that three outcome H,T,S will be
equal probable?]

Figure 8: An evolution for the three-faced coin.

Consider an evolution law Ld for the three-faced coin as depicted in Fig.8.

Given the initial state the evolution can be well described as follows:

H : HT HT HT · · · (3)
T : T HT HT H · · · (4)
S : SHT HT H · · · (5)

However, such an evolution is not allowed. Why? Note that the evolution(s)
discussed for two-faced coin and six-faced die has some particular features:

(i) given a state at any instance of time the time-evolved state is completely
deterministic.

(ii) furthermore given the state at some time it is also completely determin-
istic from which particular state it is evolved.
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In other words, the features (i) and (ii) tell that both the future and the past
are completely deterministic from present. Though the evolution law Ld is
compatible with (i) it does not satisfy (ii). For instant, given the present
state H there is an ambiguity to retro-dict its past state as it can evolved
either from T or from S. In other words, such a evolution law is not reversible
in time. That can be seen from Fig.8: invert the direction of arrow there,
now you can see given the initial state H you can not predict the state in a
deterministic way. In classical physics we will not allow such laws. Our laws
will be deterministic and time symmetric.

0.2.4 More realistic system

We can think of a system with infinite number of distinct states (see Fig.9).
You can play with different possible evolution laws for this system. One such

Figure 9: System whose state are in on-one correspondence with the integers
of real number set.

law is depicted in Fig.9 that conserve the evenness/oddness (parity). Such

a system we can consider as particle if its states corresponds its position.
Therefore, particle is some physical object whose position is localized. In
principle such a system can have states that are one-one correspondence with
the set of all real numbers. In the subsequent lectures we will explore more
about those realistic systems.