Sensory studies, or when physics was psychophysics: Ernst Mach and physics between physiology and psychology, 1860–71

Abstract

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner's psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach's engagement with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach's study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach's emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach - building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome.

Epistemic circularity and measurement validity in quantitative psychology: insights from Fechner’s psychophysics

“…The innovative character of Fechner’s correlative view of measurement had an influence that went well beyond the field of psychophysics. Notably, Fechner’s correlative view was taken by the physicist Ernst Mach as a blueprint for his own view of measurement ( Heidelberger, 1993 , 2004 , 2010 ; Briggs, 2021 ; Staley, 2021 ). In Mach’s (1896/1986) view, measuring does not amount to discovering a state of the matter, but rather to discovering the relation holding between the measured characteristic and a chosen measurement standard.…”

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

“…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. 37 Conversely, Mach's epistemology developed in the context of contemporary debates in physics about mechanics, thermodynamics, and energy conservation.…”

The Icarus flight of speculation: Philosophers' vices as perceived by nineteenth‐century historians and physicists

“…Both Helmholtz and du Bois-Reymond presented themselves as spokesmen for the field of physics but also contributed to the development of psychology and physiology. On the fluid boundaries between these three emerging disciplines in nineteenth-century Germany, seeStaley 2021 andHui 2013. …”