Ernst Mach Quotes
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. The quotes below are attributed to Ernst Mach, organized by topic.
Ernst Mach on Knowledge
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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.”
Ernst Mach on Nature
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Attributed to Ernst Mach:
“It is the goal of science to make the strangeness of the world disappear.”
Ernst Mach on Truth
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Attributed to Ernst Mach:
“Bodies do not produce sensations; complexes of sensations make up bodies.”