Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Machwas an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as study of shock waves. Quotient of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honor. As a philosopher of science, he was a major influence on logical positivism, American pragmatism and through his criticism of Newton, a forerunner of Einstein's relativity...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth18 February 1838
CountryAustria
What Mach calls a thought experiment is of course not an experiment at all. At bottom it is a grammatical investigation.
Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.
Man is pre-eminently endowed with the power of voluntarily and consciously determining his own point of view.
Thing, body, matter, are nothing apart from the combinations of the elements, - the colours, sounds, and so forth - nothing apart from their so-called attributes.
A colour is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colours, upon temperatures, upon spaces, and so forth.
In the long run we shall not be able to close our eyes to this simple truth, which is the immediate outcome of psychological analysis.
In fact, sensations of pleasure and pain, however faint they may be, really constitute an essential part of the content of all so-called emotions.