Ernst Mach Quotes - Page 2

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• The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire for knowledge as an end in itself, but by the struggle to adapt himself favourably to the conditions of life.

  Ernst Mach

  Struggle, Men, Average

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• The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this matter, must often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and pencil surpass him in intelligence.

  Ernst Mach

  Math, Views, Uncomfortable Feeling

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• Not bodies produce sensations, but element-complexes (sensation-complexes) constitute the bodies. When the physicist considers the bodies as the permanent reality, the 'elements' as the transient appearance, he does not realise that all 'bodies' are only mental symbols for element-complexes (sensation-complexes).

  Ernst Mach

  Reality, Doe, Elements

  "The Analysis of Sensations". Book by Ernst Mach, 1897.

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• When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few individual features, for a different person, were it not for the existence of the chain of memories.

  Ernst Mach

  Memories, Boys, Ties

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• Everyone is free to set up an opinion and to adduce proofs in support of it. Whether, though, a scientist shall find it worth his while to enter into serious investigations of opinions so advanced is a question which his reason and instinct alone can decide. If these things, in the end, should turn out to be true, I shall not be ashamed of being the last to believe them.

  Ernst Mach

  Believe, Science, Support

  Ernst Mach (1893). “The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Exposition of Its Principles”

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• Ordinarily pleasure and pain are regarded as different from sensations.

  Ernst Mach

  Pain, Philosophy, Medicine

  Ernst Mach (1996). “The analysis of sensations”

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• A movement that we will to execute is never more than a represented movement, and appears in a different domain from that of the executed movement, which always takes place when the image is vivid enough.

  Ernst Mach

  Different, Movement, Vivid

  Ernst Mach (1996). “The analysis of sensations”

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• In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.

  Ernst Mach

  Reality, Law, Important

  ERNST MACH (1895). “POPULAR SCIENTIFIC LECTURES”

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• Without renouncing the support of physics, it is possible for the physiology of the senses, not only to pursue its own course of development, but also to afford to physical science itself powerful assistance.

  Ernst Mach

  Powerful, Support, Development

  Ernst Mach (1897). “Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations”

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• The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most of our lives, and why and for what purpose we are provisionally obliged to abandon it.

  Ernst Mach

  Tasks, Purpose, Abandon

  Ernst Mach (1959). “The Analysis of Sensations: And the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical”

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• The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless.

  Ernst Mach

  Mean, Perfect, Tasks

  Ernst Mach (1959). “The Analysis of Sensations: And the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical”

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• Archimedes constructing his circle pays with his life for his defective biological adaptation to immediate circumstances.

  Ernst Mach

  Life, Math, Circles

  Ernst Mach (2012). “Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry”, p.45, Springer Science & Business Media

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• It would not become physical science to see in its self created, changeable, economical tools, molecules and atoms, realities behind phenomena... The atom must remain a tool for representing phenomena.

  Ernst Mach

  Science, Reality, Self

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• Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast on the whole of astronomy, whereas nothing is required but an easily effected and unimportant correction to put everything right again.

  Ernst Mach

  Men, Light, Doubt

  Ernst Mach (1959). “The Analysis of Sensations: And the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical”

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• I once knew an otherwise excellent teacher who compelled his students to perform all their demonstrations with incorrect figures, on the theory that it was the logical connection of the concepts, not the figure, that was essential.

  Ernst Mach

  Teacher, Science, Essentials

  Ernst Mach, Thomas J. McCormack (2014). “Space and Geometry in the Light of Physiological, Psychological and Physical Inquiry”, p.93, Cambridge University Press

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• All this, the positive and physical essence of mechanics, which makes its chief and highest interest for a student of nature, is in existing treatises completely buried and concealed beneath a mass of technical considerations.

  Ernst Mach

  Essence, Students, Consideration

  Ernst Mach (2013). “The Science of Mechanics”, p.7, Cambridge University Press

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