New foundations for classical mechanics (Q1088421)

As the author states in the preface: ''This is a textbook on classical mechanic at the intermediate level, but its main purpose is to serve as an introduction to a new mathematical language for physics called geometric algebra. Under geometric algebra one understands the vector formulation and analytic geometric geometry involving complex numbers, quaternions and spinors. The contents are as follows: Basics of geometric algebra, mechanics of a single particle, central forces, operators, many particle systems, rigid body mechanics, celestial mechanics, foundations of mechanics and three appendices. The style of the author is of someone who has a mission to perform. The idea is to present geometric algebra as the coherent mathematical language which should lead to clear formulations and more efficient calculations. The text has been written in a clear way with many explanations of concepts and ideas and detailed examples. The illustrations match the didactical style, the editing of the book by the publisher is excellent. There are two critical remarks to be made. First a presentation as ''new foundations'' is rather pretentious as no evidence in this book can be found of the modern theory of dynamical systems. On page 476 for example one finds a vague definition of integrability, the concept of approximation has not been defined at all. Averaging, page 536, is being used without any reference to its classical and modern theory. In fact the reference list is generally outdated. A second remark may even be more important. There are many claims and loose remarks in the book which may or may not be true, but for which no evidence is presented. Examples: probable explanations for the Ice Ages on p. 512, which are still very much under discussion; the remarks on new developments in perturbation theory, p. 569, in relation with the work of Stiefel and Scheifele, do need a lot of work for their verification. Some remarks are simply incorrect like on page 527: ''The Newtonian two-body problem is the only dynamical problem in celestial mechanics for which an exact general solution is known.'' I feel that although the book serves its main purpose, the text needed more careful editing in an initial stage.