Empiriocriticisme ernst mach biography

1. Sensations And Complexes Of Sensations[edit source]

The fundamental premises of the theory of knowledge of Mach and Avenarius are frankly, simply and clearly expounded by them in their early philosophical works. To these works we shall now turn, postponing for later treatment an examination of the corrections and emendations subsequently made by these writers.

Mach wrote in 1872:

“The task of science can only be:

1. To determine the laws of connection of ideas (Psychology).
2. To discover the laws of connection of sensations (Physics).
3. To explain the laws of connection between sensations and ideas (Psycho-physics).”^[1]

This is quite clear.

The subject matter of physics is the connection between sensations and not between things or bodies, of which our sensations are the image. And in 1883, in his Mechanics, Mach repeats the same thought:

“Sensations are not ’symbols of things.’ The ’thing’ is rather a mental

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Sensations And Complexes Of Sensations

The fundamental premises of the theory of knowledge of Mach and Avenarius are frankly, simply and clearly expounded by them in their early philosophical works. To these works we shall now turn, postponing for later treatment an examination of the corrections and emendations subsequently made by these writers.

Mach wrote in 1872:

“The task of science can only be:

1. To determine the laws of connection of ideas (Psychology).
2. To discover the laws of connection of sensations (Physics).
3. To explain the laws of connection between sensations and ideas (Psycho-physics).”^[1]

This is quite clear.

The subject matter of physics is the connection between sensations and not between things or bodies, of which our sensations are the image. And in 1883, in his Mechanics, Mach repeats the same thought:

“Sensations are not ’symbols of things.’ The ’thing’ is rather a mental symbol for a complex of sensations of relative stability. Not the things (bodies) but colours, sounds, pressures, spaces, times (what we usually call sensations) are the real e

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  MATERIALISM  
AND
EMPIRIO-
CRITICISM

It is incomprehensible that Mach denies that he is a Berkeleian" (Kant studien, Bd. VIII, 1903, S. 416-17).

    W. Jerusalem, a most reactionary Kantian with whom Mach in the above-mentioned preface expresses his solidar ity ("a closer kinship" of thought than Mach had previously suspected -- Vorwort zu "Erkenntnis und Irrtum," S. x, 1906) says: "Consistent phenomenalism leads to solipsism." And therefore one must borrow a little from Kant! (See Der kritische Idealismus und die reine Logik [Critical Idealism and Pure Logic ], 1905, S. 26.)

    R. Hönigswald says: ". . . the immanentists and the empirio-criticists face the alternative of solipsism or metaphysics in the spirit of Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel" (Ueber die Lehre Hume's von der Realität der Aussendinge [Hume's Doctrine of the Reality of the External World ], 1904, S. 68).

    The English physicist Oliver Lodge, in his book denouncing the materialist Haeckel, speaks in passing, as though of something generally known, of "s