Republication of: The dynamics of general relativity

This article—summarizing the authors’ then novel formulation of General Relativity—appeared as Chap. 7, pp. 227–264, in Gravitation: an introduction to current research, L. Witten, ed. (Wiley, New York, 1962), now long out of print. Intentionally unretouched, this republication as Golden Oldie is intended to provide contemporary accessibility to the flavor of the original ideas. Some typographical corrections have been made: footnote and page numbering have changed–but not section nor equation numbering, etc. Current institutional affiliations are encoded in: arnowitt@physics.tamu.edu, deser@brandeis.edu, misner@umd.edu.