Abstract
Ernst Mach’s most well known critiques of mechanics concern mass, inertia and space and time. Conceptually motivated towards avoiding unnecessary assumptions and basing physical concepts on measured relations, they were first published in the years around 1870 (for mass and inertia) and in his well known 1883 book Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historisch-kritisch dargestellt, later translated as The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development. Philosophical discussion of Mach’s critiques has reflected these conceptual concerns, connecting them to Mach’s account of science as the economical description of phenomena. Yet manuscript records of his teaching in the 1870s show that Mach was also animated by psychophysics and the relations between inner and outer worlds. His publications attest to these broader interests as well. In the 1870s, for example, Mach developed physiological studies of the sense of motion. Soon after completing his critical history of mechanics he took up the relations between physiology and psychology in his 1886 Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen. By investigating Mach’s research across subject matter that has usually been treated separately, and integrating his teaching with his research, this chapter aims to offer a study of Mach’s philosophy as it is revealed in practice. Mach presents a highly unusual example of someone whose primary aim was to reform his own discipline of physics through the concerns of other disciplines, something he alluded to in 1886 when stating that he expected the next great enlightenments of the foundations of physics to come at the hands of biology.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ash, Mitchell G. 1995. Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890–1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Banks, Erik C. 2003. Ernst Mach’s World Elements: A Study in Natural Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
———. 2010. Neutral Monism Reconsidered. Philosophical Psychology 23: 173–187.
———. 2012. “Sympathy for the Devil: Reconsidering Ernst Mach’s Empiricism.” Review of John Blackmore, et al., eds. Ernst Mach’s Prague, John Blackmore, et al., eds. Ernst Mach’s Philosophy: Pro and Con. Metascience 21: 321–330.
Blackmore, John T. 1972. Ernst Mach: His Work, Life, and Influence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Feuer, Lewis S. 1974. Einstein and the Generations of Science. New York: Basic Books.
Heidelberger, Michael. 2010. Functional Relations and Causality in Fechner and Mach. Philosophical Psychology 23: 163–172.
Heilbron, J.L. 2000. The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science. With new afterword. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holton, Gerald. 1993. Science and Anti-science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hui, Alexandra. 2013. The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840–1910, Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mach, Ernst. 1860. Ueber die Aenderung des Tones und der Farbe durch Bewegung. Sitzungsberichte der Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien 41: 543–560.
———. 1866. Bemerkungen über die Entwicklung der Raumvorstellungen. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik N.F. 49: 227–232.
———. 1868. Ueber die Definition der Masse. Repertorium für physikalische Technik, für mathematische und astronomische Instrumentenkunde (Carl’s Repertorium der Physik) 4: 355–359.
———. 1872. Manuskript Vorlesung, Ueber einige Hauptfragen der Physik, 1872 Sommer. Deutsches Museum, NL174/449 [Mach 1872].
———. 1873a. Beiträge Zur Doppler’schen Theorie Der Ton- Und Farbenänderung Durch Bewegung. Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Prag: J.G. Calve.
———. 1873b. Notizbuch, ab 12.4.1873. Deutsches Museum, NL174/507 [Mach 1873(b)].
———. 1875. Grundlinien der Lehre von den Bewegungsempfindungen. Leipzig: Engelmann.
———. 1879. Notizbuch, ab 25.10.1879. Deutsches Museum, NL 174/519 [Mach 1879].
———. 1880. Manuskript Vorlesung. Experimentalphysik; Grundlagen der Mechanik: Statik und Dynamik 1880/81 Winter. Deutsches Museum, NL 174/450 [Mach 1880].
———. 1882. Notizbuch April 1882. Deutsches Museum, NL 174/523 [Mach 1882].
———. 1883. Die Mechanik in Ihrer Entwickelung Historisch-Kritisch Dargestellt. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus.
———. 1897. Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations. Chicago: Open Court. Trans C.M. Williams. First edition, Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen. Jena: Fischer, 1886.
———. 1911. History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy. Chicago/London: The Open Court Publishing Company/Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Trans Philip E.B. Jourdain. First edition, Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit. Prag: J.G. Calve, 1872..
Pojman, Paul. 2011a. Ernst Mach. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, first published 2008.
———. 2011b. The Influence of Biology and Psychology on Physics: Ernst Mach Revisited. Perspectives on Science 19(2): 121–135.
Ratliff, Floyd. 1965. Mach Bands: Quantitative Studies on Neural Networks in the Retina. San Francisco/London: Holden-Day.
Staley, Richard. 2013. Ernst Mach on Bodies and Buckets. Physics Today 66 (12): 42–47.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Staley, R. (2017). “Beyond the Conventional Boundaries of Physics”: On Relating Ernst Mach’s Philosophy to His Teaching and Research in the 1870s and 1880s. In: Stadler, F. (eds) Integrated History and Philosophy of Science. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53258-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53258-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53257-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53258-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)