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Ernst Mach
(18 Feb 1838 - 19 Feb 1916)
Austrian physicist and philosopher.
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Science Quotes by Ernst Mach (7)
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
In Ernst Mach and Thomas Joseph McCormack, Space and Geometry (1906), 93.
See also: | Compel (2) | Concept (14) | Connection (6) | Demonstration (10) | Essential (5) | Excellent (2) | Logic (66) | Perform (3) | Student (17) | Teacher (26) | Theory (179)
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
'The Economical Nature of Physics' (1882), in Popular Scientfic Lectures, trans. Thomas J. McConnack (1910), 206-7.
See also: | Atom (85) | Change (40) | Creation (46) | Molecule (39) | Phenomenon (25) | Physical Science (11) | Tool (10)
Physics is experience, arranged in economical order.
— Ernst Mach
'The Economical Nature of Physics' (1882), in Popular Scientific Lectures, trans. Thomas J. McConnack (1910), 197.
Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
— Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach and Thomas Joseph McCormick (trans.), The Science of Mechanics: a Critical and Historical Account of its Development (1919), 490.
The power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.
— Ernst Mach
Quoted in Freeman Dyson, 'Mathematic; in the Physical Sciences', Scientific American (Sep 1964), 211, No. 3, 133.
Thought experiment is in any case a necessary precondition for physical experiment. Every experimenter and inventor must have the planned arrangement in his head before translating it into fact.
— Ernst Mach
'On Thought Experiments' (1897), in Erwin H. Hiebert (ed.), Erkenntnis und Irrtum (1905), trans. Thomas J. McCormack and Paul Foulkes (1976), 184.
See also: | Arrangement (4) | Experiment (199) | Experiment (199) | Fact (139) | Inventor (15) | Plan (8) | Thought (65)
To us investigators, the concept 'soul' is irrelevant and a matter for laughter. But matter is an abstraction of exactly the same kind, just as good and just as bad as it is. We know as much about the soul as we do of matter.
— Ernst Mach
'Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit' (1872). Trans. Philip E. Jourdain, History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy (1911), 48.
