Abstract
The Coriolis force is an inertial force first described by G.G. Coriolis in 1835. It is associated with bodies moving on rotating surfaces, so it is important to major motions on the surface of the earth. The computations involved are entirely classical and could easily have been made by contemporaries of Leibniz. Yet even now classical mechanics is not fully satisfactory: two successive entries in the latest Encyclopedia flatly contradict each other as to whether the Coriolis effect is significant in the study of the flow of rivers and streams.
The Coriolis effect is… negligible with respect to fluvial processes, however, and deflection of the paths of rivers is not related to it. Encyclopedia Brittanica, Chicago, 1976. Micropedia Vol. III, p. 152, entry: “Coriolis Effect.”
The Coriolis effect has great significance in astro-physics and stellar dynamics [etc.]…The Coriolis force figures prominently in studies…of the hydro-sphere, in which it affects the rotation of whirlpools, meander formations in rivers and streams, and the oceanic currents. Ibid., Next entry: “Coriolis Force.”
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Notes
R.B. Lindsay, Physical Mechanics, 3rd Edn., Princeton, 1961, p. 381.
Specimen Dynamicum (1765), GM VI, p. 238, Loemker, p. 438.
Ibid.
For popular expositions of this effect, described in most middle level textbooks of mechanics, see M. Correll, “The Case of the Coriolis Force,” The Physics Teacher, Jan. 1976
or J.E. McDonald, “The Coriolis Effect,” Scientific American, May 1952.
D. Halliday and R. Resnick, Physics, Parts I and II, Combined, 3rd. Edn., New York, 1976, p. A3.
R. Feynman, Lectures on Physics, Berkeley, 1962, Vol. I, p. 12–11.
G.M. II, p. 193; Loemker, p. 419.
For the “small paper sent to Mr. Viviani, and which seems appropriate to persuade the gentlemen in Rome to allow the Copernican hypothesis” (cf. previous footnote reference), see G.M. VI, 144–7.
Specimen Dynamicum, G.M. VI, p. 253; Loemker, p. 439.
Ian Hacking, “The Identity of Indiscernibles,” The Journal of Philosophy, 1975.
Ian Hacking, “A Leibnizian Space,” Dialogue, 1975.
Feynman, Ibid., p. 12–11f.
Arthur Fine, “The Natural Ontological Attitude,” forthcoming in J. Leplin, ed., Scientific Realism, Notre Dame.
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© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Hacking, I. (1985). Why Motion is Only a Well-Founded Phenomenon. In: Okruhlik, K., Brown, J.R. (eds) The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5490-8_4
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