>>13647445There isn't much of a thing as outdated in maths and physics with the exception of incorrect theories: one rare example is the last section of Jeans' E&M book dealing with the electron. But that doesn't make a difference to the rest of the book, and you'll find excellent material in the rest of it.
In the same way, Whittaker's classical mechanics book is not "outdated"; it just has a very geometry-heavy perspective, which can actually be good for some people (and actually gives one of the better insights on elliptic functions in his chapter on the pendulum, which is all but absent in modern texts). A more modern book like Sudarshan's by contrast could also be accused of being too abstract and giving fuck all physical intuition.
Another benefit of older texts is that they used to have far more emphasis on knowing special functions and doing heavy duty manipulations, or just have material which is absent nowadays.
Another good example of the latter is Jackson's text on E&M which doesn't handle conformal transformations at all, but these were almost expected to be mastered by older students since they were mainstream in the tripos days. And they're not excluded because they're "outdated," they're actually incredibly important.
But in short
>>13647574 is right and
>>13647484 is a dipshit.
