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what? didn't physics start with Newtonian mechanics? how would there be textbooks before that?
There are plenty of textbooks of physics before then, even predating Greece. Waterworks, astronomy, ship building, architecture, war machines, not to mention metaphysics, alchemy, atomic theory, etc.
We didn't have a rigorous scientific method until thereabouts though.
Waterworks, astronomy, ship building, architecture, war machines,
I would say that's engineering, not physics (except for astronomy)
Physics is when you start describing the laws of nature, not how to build something
That's very revisionist of you.
What we call physics today wouldn't qualify as physics in Ancient Greece, where they described how the world actually works, and not bothering with this empiricism nonsense.
It's not revisionist to say that and engineering texts are engineering texts rather than physics texts, it's just properly classifying them.
I'm not sure whether the ancient Greeks really had a concept of "physics" as a dedicated discipline like we do today- they would probably put a lot of what we do under the umbrella of "natural philosophy". The separation of pure natural science into distinct branches is a relatively recent phenomenon. The separation between pure science and engineering on the other hand is quite old.
The Greek very much had a concept of Physics.
The word physics comes from the Latin physica ('study of nature'), which itself is a borrowing of the Greek φυσική (phusikḗ 'natural science'), a term derived from φύσις (phúsis 'origin, nature, property') (Wikipedia)
Also note that Aristotelian physics was the dominant paradigm in Europe almost until Newton.
There's an argument to be had that engineering didn't exist as a science until recently. Several of the more famous engineering treatises name it as crafting.
I say we should go back to calling engineering crafting. Furthermore, physics ought to be natureken, and science ought to be worldken. We could call atomic theory uncleftish beholding.
The word physics comes from Latin physica ("study of nature")
This is essentially my point. You don't have to go more than a couple hundred years back before "natural science" or "natural philosophy" was considered a single field, without a distinction between e.g. physics and chemistry. Engineering (as we call it today) or "crafting", has been considered separate from the study of nature itself (or "natural philosophy") all the way back to before Ancient Greece.
I'm not saying they knew nothing about physics. I'm saying that they didn't regard it as a distinct discipline the way we do today. No Greek philosopher would have called themselves a "chemist" or "physicist" or "biologist", but they would separate between "natural philosopher" and "craftsman", just as we today separate between "scientist" and "engineer".
You're still viewing it from today's perspective. We distinguish natural philosophy from chemistry, physics, etc. - they did not.
They did however call natural philosophy "Physics". From their perspective all our fields fit under physics, except for applied science which fits under crafting (as natural philosophy devalued empiricism).
You summed it up perfectly. What you're saying is exactly the point I'm trying to get across. We're just using different words.
You're using "physics" in the sense it was used 2000 years ago when you say "from their perspective all our fields fit under physics". I'm saying the exact same thing, only replacing "physics" with "natural science/natural philosophy", which are the umbrella terms used today.
You even point out that "all our fields fit under physics (natural science/philosophy), except for applied science (engineering)", which is exactly the point I'm making when saying they saw no distinction between the different natural sciences, but did distinguish between "pure science" and "engineering".
i wasn't implying anything, it depends on your definition of physics
I always maintain that Aristotle's notions of how to test theories of 'natural philosophy' are a reasonable starting point for 'science'