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
If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable, they would also have more practical importance for us.
Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
Physics is experience, arranged in economical order.
The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately returns to the general point of view of mankind.
The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this matter, must often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and pencil surpass him in intelligence.
Ordinarily pleasure and pain are regarded as different from sensations.
Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses.
The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless.
The ego is as little absolutely permanent as are bodies.
The acquisition of the most elementary truth does not devolve upon the individual alone: it is pre-effected in the development of the race.
The history of the development of mechanics is quite indispensable to a full comprehension of the science in its present condition. It also affords a simple and instructive example or the processes by which natural science generally is developed.
The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most of our lives, and why and for what purpose we are provisionally obliged to abandon it.
All this, the positive and physical essence of mechanics, which makes its chief and highest interest for a student of nature, is in existing treatises completely buried and concealed beneath a mass of technical considerations.
I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion.