Abstract
Mach’s philosophy (and his theory of knowledge) is usually characterized as empiricism, sensualism, and phenomenalism. It is a continuation of the older philosophical tradition, the roots of which go back to the 18th-century sensualism of Hume in England and Condillac in France; its more remote ancestors are John Locke and George Berkeley, who themselves belonged to the still older tradition of nominalism. The main features of this philosophy may be briefly characterized in the following way: sensory experience is the basis of all knowledge; the human mind is at its birth a tabula rasa, which is gradually filled by the traces of sensory impressions; even the so-called highest and most abstract thought processes contain faint sensory elements and thus depend indirectly on sensory experience. In John Locke’s words: Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu; there is no such thing as imageless thought. While memory consists in more or less faithful reproductions of the traces of original sensory impressions, imagination is nothing but a reproduction of the same images in a different order; in this respect there is no basic difference between the so-called passive imagination of dreams and the active imagination characterizing artistic and intellectual creation. Mach’s contemporary, Ebbinghaus, claimed that what we call normal, orderly thought is something in between the fixed ideas and the disorderly flight of imagination (Ideenflucht); human thought, whether in its normal or pathological manifestations, is wholly determined by the laws of association.
An earlier version of this paper was read to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science.
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References
W. James, The Principles of Psychology, I, 236.
H. Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, 3rd ed., New York 1897, I, Part III; ‘General Synthesis’ (pp. 291-392).
H. Helmholtz, ‘Über den Ursprung und Bedeutung der geometrischen Axiome’, in Vorträge und Reden (1884), II, pp. 1–31; ‘Die Tatsachen der Wahrnehmung’, op. cit. II, pp. 217-251.
‘Zählen und Messen’, originally published in Philosophische Aufsätze, Eduard Zeller zu seinem fünfzigjährigen Doktorjubiläum, Leipzig 1887; incorporated in the Schlick-Hertz edition (cf. Note 6).
Helmholtz’s Treatise of Physiological Optics, transl. from the third German edition (ed. by James P.C. Southall), New York 1924 (Dover ed., 1962), II, p. 4.
H. von Helmholtz, Schriften zur Erkenntnisstheorie (ed. by Motriz Schlick und Paul Hertz), Berlin 1921; M. Schlick, ‘Helmholtz als Erkenntnistheoretiker’, in Helmholtz als Physiker, Physiolog und Philosopher, Karlsruhe 1922, pp 29-39.
H. Spencer, op. cit., II, 1, p. 195.
Cf. H. Spencer, op. cit., II, 2, Chapter XI, in which he maintains “the inconceivability of negation” as a universal criterion against John Stuart Mill (pp. 406-427). On the impossibility of the denial of the propositions of Euclidian geometry cf. p. 420; on the ‘indissoluble connections’ underlying the intuitive certainty of the geometrical axioms: p. 505 ff.
Cf. Vorträge und Reden, I, pp. 27–28, where Helmholtz describes the hypothetical experiences in the spherical space. On the other hand, against the later view of Poincaré, he insists on the absolute unimaginability of the fourth dimension (p. 29). Helmholtz’s view about the imaginability of non-Euclidian geometries was challenged by Alois Riehl in his article ‘Helmholtz in seiner Verhältnis zu Kant’, Kantstudien 9 (1904), especially pp. 278-279. Cf. Schlick’s comment in Note 49 of his edition of Helmholtz’s writings.
Cf. Vorträge und Reden, I, p. 246: “Das Kausalgesetz ist wirklich ein a priori gegebenes, ein transzendentales Gesetz.” For the lyrical passages, including the quotations from Goethe, see pp. 81-2, 246, 248.
Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Leipzig 1906, pp. 145, 146, 426; Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre, 4th ed., Leipzig 1923, p. 382.
Populär-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen, 4th ed., Leipzig 1910, pp. 245–265; cf. also E.I., pp. 164-182.
Mach’s influence on Einstein, admitted by Einstein himself, was discussed extensively and many times, in particular by Philipp Frank; one of the most recent studies, based on the material made available only recently, is that by Professor Gerald Holton ‘Where is Reality? The Answer of Einstein’. I am grateful to the author for his permission to read his study prior to its scheduled publication.
The Analysis of Sensations, Dover Publications edition 1959, p. 248–249.
The Science of Mechanics, Open Court, 1942, p. 582.
The term used by Mach in the same book, p. 560.
Quoted by R. Bouvier, La Pensée d’Ernst Mach, Paris 1923, p. 170. Bouvier repeatedly stressed the biological orientation of Mach’s theory of knowledge and correctly discerned its affinity with that of Spencer. (Cf. passim and p. 261.)
Die Prinzipen der Wärmelehre, pp. 392–393. Mach answers here Petzoldt’s criticism.
S. of M., p. 609.
P. W., p. 456.
E.T. Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, II, London 1953, p. 27.
H. Poincaré, Dernières Pensées, Paris 1913, p. 188.
The Monist 9 (1898), ‘On the Foundations of Geometry’, p. 42.
René Berthelot, Un romantisme utilitaire. Etude sur le mouvement pragmatique. Le pragmatisme chez Nietzsche et Poincaré. On different meanings of the term ‘commodité’ see in particular Ch. III, in which he makes an interesting comparison of Poincaré and Mach; and pp. 286-308.
The article quoted in Note 23, p. 42.
‘Science and Hypothesis’, in The Foundations of Science (transl. by G.B. Halsted), The Science Press, Lancaster, 1946, p. 86. (To be referred subsequently as F.S.)
F.S., p. 81.
H.P. Robertson, ‘Geometry as a Branch of Physics’, in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (ed. by P.A. Schilpp), Evanston, Ill., 1949, p. 325.
F.S., p. 91.
‘The Value of Science’, in F.S., p. 274.
F.S., pp. 420–421. (Italics mine.)
F.S., p. 428.
F.S., pp. 78–79.
Schlick, op. cit., Note 38.
H. Poincaré, Mathematics and Science: Last Essays (transl. by John W. Bolduc), Dover Publications 1963, p. 12.
Ibidem, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 112.
R. Berthelot, op. cit., p. 256.
Op. cit., p. 112.
Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, Leipzig 1891, p. 17–18.
Science of Mechanics, pp. 274–275.
Z. Zawirski, L’Evolution de la notion du temps, Cracow 1934, pp. 10, 342.
Cf. my article ‘La théorie biologique de la connaissance chez Bergson et sa signification actuelle’, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, avril-juin 1959, 194–211.
Cf. Ludwig Mach’s preface to the 9th edition of S. of M. (1933), p. xxvi.
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čapek, M. (1969). Ernst Mach’s Biological Theory of Knowledge. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3381-7_13
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