Ernst Mach 1838 – 1916
Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher of science whose work helped to inaugurate twentieth-century philosophy of science. His Mechanics in Its Development subjected the foundations of Newtonian physics to a thoroughgoing empiricist critique, while The Analysis of Sensations argued that the basic elements of all scientific description are sensations, and that physics should be the economic ordering of these. His phenomenalism deeply influenced the early Vienna Circle and the early Einstein, even as the latter eventually moved beyond it. The Mach number in fluid dynamics is named for him.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Austrian
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Ernst Mach:
“Bodies do not produce sensations; complexes of sensations make up bodies.”
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Attributed to Ernst Mach:
“Physics is experience, arranged in economic order.”
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Attributed to Ernst Mach:
“All knowledge is for the sake of action.”
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Attributed to Ernst Mach:
“We hold a theory to be the most economical method of expressing the largest variety of facts in the simplest formulae.”
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Attributed to Ernst Mach:
“It is the goal of science to make the strangeness of the world disappear.”