EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

This set of notes was published on 25 April 1756 as part of Kant's advertisement for the lectures he was planning to give at the university in the summer semester of that year. For this reason, it is appropriate that at the end of these notes he announced the textbooks that he would be using for his lectures on physics, logic, and metaphysics. Kant used no textbook for his lectures on physical geography, since none was approved to that end, and he always used Wolff for mathematics, most likely Wolff's Auszug aus den Anfangsgründe aller mathematischen Wissenschaften [Excerpt from the First Principles of All Mathematical Sciences].

Kant does not present a comprehensive theory of winds in this essay. Instead, over the course of five notes, he attempts to explain a series of specific meteorological phenomena, sometimes in novel ways. (In each case, he cites independent experience to confirm the principle that is central to each explanation.) Accordingly, he claims that the direction of coastal winds – onshore or offshore – depends on the expansion and contraction of air that is caused by differences in the rate of heating and cooling of the land and the water at sea during the day and at night (first and second notes). He also explains the difference in (east–west) direction arising for winds moving from the Equator towards either of the Poles and vice versa that is due to the rotation of the earth (third note) – a phenomenon that was later described in terms of the Coriolis effect– as well as the easterly direction of the trade winds (fourth note). Finally, Kant provides an account of monsoon winds (fifth note).