Philosophy of Science
From 1895 to 1901, Mach held a newly created chair for "the history and philosophy of the inductive sciences" at the University of Vienna. In his historico-philosophical studies, Mach developed a phenomenalistic philosophy of science which became influential in the 19th and 20th centuries. He originally saw scientific laws as summaries of experimental events, constructed for the purpose of making complex data comprehensible, but later emphasized mathematical functions as a more useful way to describe sensory appearances. Thus scientific laws while somewhat idealized have more to do with describing sensations than with reality as it exists beyond sensations.
| “ | The goal which it (physical science) has set itself is the simplest and most economical abstract expression of facts.
When the human mind, with its limited powers, attempts to mirror in itself the rich life of the world, of which it itself is only a small part, and which it can never hope to exhaust, it has every reason for proceeding economically. In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted. |
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| “ | In mentally separating a body from the changeable environment in which it moves, what we really do is to extricate a group of sensations on which our thoughts are fastened and which is of relatively greater stability than the others, from the stream of all our sensations.
Suppose we were to attribute to nature the property of producing like effects in like circumstances; just these like circumstances we should not know how to find. Nature exists once only. Our schematic mental imitation alone produces like events. |
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Mach's positivism also influenced many Russian Marxists, such as Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928). In 1908, Lenin wrote a philosophical work, Materialism and Empirio-criticism (published 1909), in which he criticized Machism and the views of "Russian Machists".
In accordance with this philosophy, Mach opposed Ludwig Boltzmann and others who proposed an atomic theory of physics. Since one cannot observe things as small as atoms directly, and since no atomic model at the time was consistent, the atomic hypothesis seemed to Mach to be unwarranted, and perhaps not sufficiently "economical". Mach had a direct influence on the Vienna Circle philosophers and the school of logical positivism in general.
Mach is attributed with a number of principles that distill his ideal of physical theorisation — what is now called "Machian physics":
- It should be based entirely on directly observable phenomena (in line with his positivistic leanings)
- It should completely eschew absolute space and time in favor of relative motion
- Any phenomena that would seem attributable to absolute space and time (e.g. inertia, and centrifugal force) should instead be seen as emerging from the large scale distribution of matter in the universe.
The last is singled out, particularly by Albert Einstein as "the" Mach's principle. Einstein cited it as one of the three principles underlying general relativity. In 1930, he stated that "it is justified to consider Mach as the precursor of the general theory of relativity", though Mach, before his death, would reject Einstein's theory. Einstein was aware that his theories did not fulfill all Mach's principles, and no subsequent theory has either, despite considerable effort.
Read more about this topic: Ernst Mach
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