Dynamics is a big subject with many different subdisciplines and the genesis of simulation is an extremely important part of it.
Divided into two conceptually different sections, History and Philosophy, the presented book is made up of five distinct parts. The first of them contains the FPU (Fermi-Pasta-Ulam) work in detail, including discussions of the thinking, expectations and results. The material concerned with the FPU research program stretches on to the following three chapters. In the second and the fourth ones the author presents the KAM (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser) theorem and the concepts induced by its appearance in the researchers’ world. Chapter 3 is devoted to a discussion of the KAM theorem itself, its development, the dynamical problem it solves and the nature of that solution. The last chapter takes up the epistemology of simulation, the meaning of computer simulation and its importance for phenomena modeling, for verifying and rejecting the theoretical hypothesis.
The complete study of the FPU problem from the author’s book succeeds to give a didactic and pertinent image of dynamics nucleus, simulation.