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Talk:History of centrifugal and centripetal forces

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Merge

We had the history repeated and diverging in two articles, in neither of which was it well integrated or a good fit, so I made this place to merge them. Still need to merge from Centrifugal_force#History_of_conceptions_of_centrifugal_and_centripetal_forces. OK? Dicklyon (talk) 17:06, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. Adding centripetal force may be tricky. Brews ohare (talk) 17:11, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
I did the merge. It doesn't say much about centripetal; maybe it should say more. Dicklyon (talk) 06:20, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Johann Bernoulli II

FyzixFighter, you have just removed a perfectly sourced paragraph which contained Johann Bernoulli's views on centrifugal force. Yesterday, you were arguing about the absolute right to insert quotes from secondary sources and now you are taking the opposite point of view. The only common theme here seems to be your ongoing campaign of removing edits which I make. You can't even leave the history section alone where it conflicts with your modern day viewpoint. David Tombe (talk) 11:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

As I indicated in the edit summary, I removed it for several reasons. The primary reason is that this has nothing to do with the history of centrifugal force. Why is Bernoulli's use of centrifugal force in this instance notable with respect to the conception of centrifugal force? What impact did his ideas have on the development of the understanding of the centrifugal force? This is not an article about the various now defunct aether theories, but about the history of centrifugal force. From my reading of other history of science sources, Bernoulli's usage was not a unique approach as all the Cartesian mechanical models invented in that era that were based on vortices relied on Huygens' and Descartes' concept of centrifugal force. Are we to include every instance in the history of science where someone used the idea of centrifugal force to support their ideas? Or are we going to actually focus on the subject of the article, and include those instances in history whose notability with respect to the subject are well established by secondary sources? What are the thoughts of the other editors - Dick, David J, Wilhelm, anyone else? --FyzixFighter (talk) 14:39, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree with FF. It's the same reason I omitted the Maxwell 1861 vortex theory when I did the merge. I couldn't see the relevant to the topic. Dicklyon (talk) 15:00, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Now there's a surprise. When has Dicklyon not sided with FyzixFighter? They both claim that they can't see how the idea of vortices pushing against each other with centrifugal force can be relevant to the topic of centrifugal force! This is just a case of deleting a part of the history of centrifugal force that Dicklyon and FyzixFighter don't want to be reminded about. They are obviously both afraid that there might be too much truth in it. Nobody deletes historical ideas unless those ideas represent a plausible alternative to the existing orthodoxy. David Tombe (talk) 18:27, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I find that idea that EM waves are communicated via a sea of vortices to be quite frighening! Dicklyon (talk) 23:16, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Dick, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that the idea is ridiculous and that Maxwell and Bernoulli were crackpots? If so, then why worry about it being accurately recorded as an item of historical curiosity along with the flat Earth theory? Or are you trying to tell me that you are actually frightened by the idea, and that that's why you and FyzixFighter have deleted all references to it? I'll be quite frank about the matter. I think that Maxwell and Bernoulli were both right. I understand that Euler and Tesla were also sold on the idea. David Tombe (talk) 23:29, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that dead-end ideas about the ether don't serve to clarify the conception of centrifugal force, and that I'm not fearful of truth. Dicklyon (talk) 01:16, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
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