Zitate von Ernst Mach

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Ernst Mach

Geburtstag: 18. Februar 1838
Todesdatum: 19. Februar 1916

Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach war ein österreichischer Physiker, Sinnesphysiologe, Philosoph und Wissenschaftstheoretiker sowie ein Pionier der gerade entstehenden Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Nach Ernst Mach ist die Mach-Zahl benannt, welche die Geschwindigkeit im Verhältnis zur Schallgeschwindigkeit beschreibt.

Neben Problemen in der Physik und deren Lösungen beschäftigte er sich aber auch mit Fragen der Philosophie. Er gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Vertreter oder Mitbegründer des Empiriokritizismus. In der Sinnesphysiologie machte er wichtige Experimente zum Gleichgewichtssinn des Menschen, zu Reizschwellen und zu optischen Täuschungen . In der Psychologie wurde er ein Wegbereiter der Gestaltpsychologie bzw. Gestalttheorie.

Zitate Ernst Mach

„Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". … The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.“

— Ernst Mach
p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454

„Personally, people know themselves very poorly.“

— Ernst Mach
Contributions to the analysis of the sensations (1897), translated by Cora May Williams, published by Open Court Publishing Company, p. 4

„The aim of research is the discovery of the equations which subsist between the elements of phenomena.“

— Ernst Mach
p. 205; On aim of research.

„I see the expression of... economy clearly in the gradual reduction of the statical laws of machines to a single one, viz., the principle of virtual work: in the replacement of Kepler's laws by Newton's single law... and in the [subsequent] reduction, simplification and clarification of the laws of dynamics. I see clearly the biological-economical adaptation of ideas, which takes place by the principles of continuity (permanence) and of adequate definition and splits the concept 'heat' into the two concepts of 'temperature' and 'quantity of heat'; and I see how the concept 'quantity of heat' leads on to 'latent heat', and to the concepts of 'energy' and 'entropy'.“

— Ernst Mach
Mach (1910) "Die Leitgedanken meiner naturwissenschaftlichcn Erkennenislehre und ihr Aufnahme durch die Zeitgenossen", Physikalische Zeitschrift. 1, 1910, 599-606 Eng. trans. as "The Guiding Principles of my Scientific Theory of Knowledge and its Reception by my Contemporaries", in S. Toulmin ed., Physical Reality, New York : Harper, 1970. pp.28-43. Cited in: K. Mulligan & B. Smith (1988) " Mach and Ehrenfels: Foundations of Gestalt Theory http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/mach/mach.pdf"

„I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion.“

— Ernst Mach
"On the Relative Educational Value of the Classics and the Mathematico-Physical Sciences in Colleges and High Schools", an address in (16 April 1886), published in Popular Scientific Lectures (1898), as translated by Thomas J. McCormack, p. 367