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
Ernst Mach quotes about
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.
What Mach calls a thought experiment is of course not an experiment at all. At bottom it is a grammatical investigation.
A movement that we will to execute is never more than a represented movement, and appears in a different domain from that of the executed movement, which always takes place when the image is vivid enough.
The popular notion of an antithesis between appearance and reality has exercised a very powerful influence on scientific and philosophical thought.