Computational physics is physics done by means of computational methods. Computers do not enter into this tentative definition. A number of fundamental techniques of our craft were introduced by Newton, Gauss, Jacobi, and other pioneers who lived quite some time before the invention of workable calculating machines. To be sure, nobody in his right state of mind would apply stochastic methods by throwing dice, and the iterative solution of differential equations is feasible only in conjunction with the high computing speed of electronic calculators. Nevertheless, computational physics is much more than ''Physics Using Computers''.

The essential point in computational physics is not the use of machines, but the systematic application of numerical techniques in place of, and in addition to, analytical methods, in order to render accessible to computation as large a part of physical reality as possible.

In all quantifying sciences the advent of computers rapidly extended the applicability of such numerical methods. In the case of physics, however, it triggered the evolution of an entirely new field with its own goals, its own problems, and its own heroes. Since the late forties, computational physicists have developed new numerical techniques (Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulation, fast Fourier transformation), discovered unexpected physical phenomena (Alder vortices, shear thinning), and posed new questions to theory and experiment (chaos, strange attractors, cellular automata, neural nets, spin glasses, ...).

An introductory text on computational physics must first of all provide the basic numerical/computational techniques.