“Beyond the Conventional Boundaries of Physics”: On Relating Ernst Mach’s Philosophy to His Teaching and Research in the 1870s and 1880s

Abstract

Ernst Mach's most well known critiques of mechanics concerning mass, inertia and space and time were conceptually motivated by the aim of avoiding unnecessary assumptions and basing the concepts of physics upon measured relations, and they were first published in the years around 1870 (for mass and inertia) and in his well known 1883 book Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung historisch-kritisch dargestellt. Philosophical discussion of them has reflected these conceptual concerns, and related Mach's critique to his emphasis on the economy of thought. Yet manuscript records of Mach's teaching in the 1870s shows that his approach was animated also by the concerns of psychophysics and the relations between inner and outer worlds, and his publications attest to these broader interests also. In the 1870s, for example, Mach developed physiological studies of the sense of motion, and soon after his critical history of mechanics was published in 1883, his 1886 Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen was intimately concerned with the relations between physiology and psychology. By investigating Mach's research across subject matter that has usually been treated separately, and seeking to integrate his teaching and research also, this paper aims at offering a study of Mach's philosophy as it is revealed in practice. Indeed, Mach offers a highly unusual example whose primary aim was to reform his own discipline of physics through the concerns of other disciplines, something he alluded to in 1886 when stating that he expected the next great enlightenments of the foundations of physics to come at the hands of biology.

History as a Tool for Natural Science

“…But simultaneously, he tried to stretch, cross, and circumvent the boundaries of his discipline. 18 He did so because he was convinced that all knowledge disciplines were principally interconnected: "fixed, sharp lines of demarcation cannot be drawn." 19 For one thing, Mach was a proponent of psychophysics; he held that "the theories and techniques of several disciplines needed to be combined in order to fruitfully study sensory perception."…”

The Concept of Fact in German Physics around 1900: A Comparison between Mach and Einstein

“…Indeed, Mach fashioned himself as a physicist "unconstrained by the conventional barriers of the specialist," as Richard Staley has argued. 35 In his research as well as in his teaching, Mach sought to connect physics to psychology and physiology, and he approached these disciplines within one overarching epistemological framework. 36 Furthermore, Mach believed that contemporary physics was to be practiced from a "historical-critical" perspective, which is why much of his work in physics was interspersed with epistemological reflections.…”