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Principle of Least Action

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Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

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Introduction

The principle of least action is a general variational principle for dynamical systems formulated in the mid-eighteenth century by Maupertuis, Euler, and Lagrange. Its invention gave rise to an intense controversy over priority, famous even outside scientific circles because of the intervention of Voltaire and Frederick II of Prussia. Today, a variety of action principles provide the basis of several theories of mathematical physics.

Leibniz

While the vague idea that Nature achieves its goals with minimum effort goes back at least to Aristotle and Hero of Alexandria, the first mathematically and physically significant formulation of a minimum principle, that a ray of light follows the path of least time, was due to Pierre de Fermat (1662). Fermat’s principle beautifully explained the Snell-Descartes law of refraction, but went against the Cartesian (and, later, Newtonian) notion that light moves faster through denser media.

In 1682 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz devised a way...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy

    Sandro Caparrini

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  1. Sandro Caparrini
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Correspondence to Sandro Caparrini .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Dana Jalobeanu

  2. Dept. of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University Dept. Philosophy & Moral Sci, Ghent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

    Charles T. Wolfe

Section Editor information

  1. Philosophy, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

    Marius Stan

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Caparrini, S. (2020). Principle of Least Action. In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_38-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_38-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9

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