Introduction to topological dynamics

The theory of differential equations originated at the end of the seventeenth century in the works of I. Newton, G. W. Leibniz and others. During the first century of its existence, this theory consisted only of isolated methods of solving certain types of differential equations; but the problem of the existence of a solution and its representability in quadratures was posed already in the second. As a result of numerous investigations it became clear that integrability in quadratures is an extremely rare phe­ nomenon and that the solution of many differential equations arising in applications cannot be expressed in quadratures. Also the methods of numerical integration of equations did not open the road to the general theory since these methods yield only one particular solution and this solution is obtained on a finite interval. Applications - especially the problems of celestial mechanics - required the clarification of at least the nature of the behavior of integral curves in the entire domain of their existence without integration of the equation. In this connection, at the end of the last century there arose the qualitative theory of differential equations, the creators of which one must by all rights consider to be H. Poincare and A. M. Lyapunov.