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
Bodies do not produce sensations, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) make up bodies.
Not bodies produce sensations, but element-complexes (sensation-complexes) constitute the bodies. When the physicist considers the bodies as the permanent reality, the `elements' as the transient appearance, he does not realise that all `bodies' are only mental symbols for element-complexes (sensation-complexes
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.
The very gradual character of the changes of the body also contributes to the stability of the ego, but in a much less degree than people imagine.
The theory of relativity is just as unacceptable to me as, say, the existence of the atom or other such dogmas.
The philosophical point of view of the average man - if that term may be applied to his naive realism - has a claim to the highest consideration.
The popular notion of an antithesis between appearance and reality has exercised a very powerful influence on scientific and philosophical thought.
Thus the great gulf between physical and psychological research persists only when we acquiesce in our habitual stereotyped conceptions.
Strange as it may seem, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought, and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.
I once knew an otherwise excellent teacher who compelled his students to perform all their demonstrations with incorrect figures, on the theory that it was the logical connection of the concepts, not the figure, that was essential.
Personally, people know themselves very poorly.
Ordinarily pleasure and pain are regarded as different from sensations.
Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast on the whole of astronomy, whereas nothing is required but an easily effected and unimportant correction to put everything right again.
Many an article that I myself penned twenty years ago impresses me now as something quite foreign to myself.