title: Continuum Mechanics in the Earth Sciences
author:  William I. Newman 
description: This interdisciplinary book provides a class-tested, accessible overview of continuum mechanics. It surveys solid, fluid and gas dynamics and explores new aspects of the field emerging from nonlinearity and dynamical complexity. A practical resource for graduate students in geophysics, planetary physics and geology and a beneficial tool for professional scientists.
zlib_text: (C) Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
  
  Gerard A. MauginContinuum Mechanics through the Ages - From the Renaissance to
  the Twentieth CenturySolid Mechanics and Its
  Applications22310.1007/978-3-319-26593-3_1
  
  # 1. Particles/Molecules Versus Continuum: The Never-Ending Debate
  
  Gerard A. Maugin1
  
  (1)
  
  Institut Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris
  Cedex 05, France
  
  Gerard A. Maugin
  
  Email: [gerard.maugin@upmc.fr](mailto:gerard.maugin@upmc.fr)
  
  Abstract
  
  Corpuscular tiny bodies ("particles") interacting through empty space via at-
  a-distance forces and a continuum transmitting forces by contact are
  traditionally presented as two alternate pictures of the physical mechanical
  world, and this from the early inception of physics by the ancient Greek
  "philosophers of Nature". But for more than two millenaries endeavours by the
  most illustrious physicists and mathematicians have been to reconcile these
  two visions or, for the least, to deduce the second