## 1. Summary



> 
> 
> A broad foundation is laid for the theory in question, and light is
> shed upon it from new sides, if, in conformity with the stimulus given
> by Darwinism, we conceive of all psychical life -- including
> science -- as biological appearance, and if we apply to the theory
> the Darwinian conceptions of struggle for existence, of development,
> and of selection. [*Analysis of Sensations*, 49-50]
> 
> 




Mach was a naturalist and a monist, as well as an anti-materialist
in the sense of being an anti-mechanist. The connection between
naturalism and materialism is an important one for Mach.
Naturalism, in its simplest sense, is the doctrine that there is
nothing beyond nature, not even the organic or mental, and evolution is
thus generally a crucial component of it. The materialism of the
mechanical philosophy is the further view that this nature consists of
matter in motion, and in particular that psychic phenomena can be
reduced to matter in motion. Although materialism can make as
much use of evolution as naturalism, Mach's nineteenth century
evolutionary views influenced his anti-materialism. Whereas
mechanistic materialism views nature as an organized system of billiard
balls, Mach's evolutionary perspective viewed nature as a dynamic
process.




Mach is part of the empiricist tradition, but he also believed in
something like *a priori* truths. But it is a biologized *a
priori*: what is *a priori* to an individual organism
was *a posteriori* to its ancestors; not only does the *a
priori* pre-form experience, but the *a priori* is itself
formed from experience. It was simultaneously the contradiction and
confirmation of Kantian epistemology. In as much as Kant used
the *a priori* to explain how knowledge is possible, Mach uses
the knowledge of the new sciences to explain how an *a priori* is
possible. One more patch of philosophy, it was thought, yielded to
science.




Mach's empiricism is complicated. It has its roots in
the belief that knowledge is a product of evolution, that our senses,
minds, and cultures have an evolutionary history. It was simple
experience to which early organisms responded, and it was out of simple
experiences that the first images of the world were constructed.
These constructions became *a priori*, allowing new and more complicated
understandings, and so forth. This process is in a sense repeated
in development; individual development begins through a process of the
interaction of simple sensations with those innate capacities formed in
our ancestors. Out of this, more complex understandings arise;
the process continues. Science furthers this biological process
by bringing our primitive conceptions into contact with new
environments, thus causing mental adaptation. The one and same
process unites all features of activity in nature: the adaptation
of early life to primordial environments and the adaptation of modern
science to new data are unified under the principle of experience
forcing adaptation in memory. Though loosely an empiricist in
this sense, he rejected Locke's *tabula rasa*, and aligned
himself against the more empiricist Helmholtz and towards the nativist
Ewald Hering in their famous nature-nurture debates. He is not in
the least a traditional empiricist.




Mach is generally considered a 'positivist'. However, this
tells us little, as positivism is really a collection of traditions,
connected often by misunderstandings as much as by actual intellectual
agreement. Furthermore, the word today has come to mean something so
far removed from its nineteenth century origins as to be practically
harmful in understanding the how it was used in the nineteenth
century. Outside of the social sciences (where it is alive and well),
the word 'positivism' seems to be used mostly by
post-modernists, deconstructionists, and the Frankfurt school as a
word to represent that branch of the enlightenment tradition that
failed; it has become the 'other' which we all know is
wrong without having to know what it is. Comte was a Positivist. Mach,
too, was a Positivist, but Mach probably has more in common with
Husserl than Comte, and certainly more in common with James.




Mach is not a phenomenalist under normal uses of this term, but this
certainly requires investigation. First, to whatever extent he was a
phenomenalist, he was a 'scientific' phenomenalist: his
ideas were not derived from philosophical skepticism but through
application of the results of psychology and evolutionary theory. He
provides clues as to how we should understand his infamous
"elements"--they are related to the thought of
Fechner and Ewald Hering. Secondly, he advocated that physics should
describe relations of experience as much as possible; in his time this
was termed 'phenomenological physics'. This was clearly
meant as a methodological suggestion, arising out of the way he
thought physics could best respond to the challenges presented to it
by the life sciences. Thirdly, he writes that his ideas were the same
as Avenarius who had approached questions of the relationship between
the psychical and the physical from a physicalistic
perspective. Although Mach undoubtedly adopts a sensationalist basis,
this foundation *is not crucial for Mach*. He recognizes the
possibility of other foundations:



> 
> 
> ... many readers have found a stumbling-block in what they
> took, erroneously indeed, to be the general character of my conception
> of the universe. And, to begin with, I must say that anyone who,
> in spite of repeated protests from myself and from other quarters,
> identifies my view with that of Berkeley, is undoubtedly very far
> removed from a proper appreciation of my position. This
> misconception is no doubt partly due to the fact that my view was
> developed from an earlier idealistic phase, which has left on my
> language traces which are probably not even yet entirely
> obliterated. For, of all the approaches to my standpoint, the one
> by way of idealism seems to me the easiest and most natural.... I
> feel it to be a piece of particularly good fortune that Avenarius has
> developed *the same conception of the relation between the physical
> and psychical on an entirely realistic, or, if the phrase be preferred,
> a materialistic foundation* ... [*italics mine;*
> *AS:* 361-2; see also 358]




Experimental psychology had just been founded. Mach's elements
are, quite simply, the variables of a major branch of psychology, the
new field of psychophysics. Mach was part of the first generation
of physiological psychologists that thought they had broken through the
primeval walls dividing the physical from the mental. They
thought they had solved this ancient problem through a scientific,
monistic unification. The physical was characterized by its
ability to be quantified: it was part of science.
Now, the realm of *Geist* was falling under the same methods
used so successfully in physics. Following the pioneering work of
Fechner, they had measured sensation and found that the
relationship of external stimulus to inner response followed
mathematical law. Fueled further by developments in evolutionary
theory, their optimism soared, perhaps a bit too high. As
so often happens in periods of scientific optimism, these new
discoveries called for a philosophy in which they would be at
home. Mach not only took up this challenge, but as a physicist
also applied the results of this tradition to the categories of
physics.




Modern psychologists regard Mach as the forerunner of the idea of
neural nets in perception. He discovered that the eye has a mind
of its own; we perceive not direct stimuli but *relations* of
stimuli. The visual system operates through a process of
continual adaptation of the present sensation to previous ones.
We do not experience 'reality' but rather experience the
after effects of our nervous system's adaptations to new
stimuli. Furthermore, from an evolutionary perspective, it was
*necessary* that this relational nature of perception be
so. What were once thought of as errors of the brain, Mach showed
to be adaptations. His argument is brilliant and he is cited even
today in psychology textbooks for these contributions.
Furthermore, his work in physiology influenced his epistemology.
If we perceive not things directly but contrasts of things, then the
world is a biological construction formed through the process of our
nervous system adapting to new sensations. Representationalist
theories of perception, which posit a direct correspondence between
appearance and reality, become untenable.




Mach is also considered by Gestalt theorists to be one of their
forerunners. Christian von Ehrenfels, the founder of Gestalt
theory, begins his seminal 1890 paper "Uber
Gestaltqualitaten" by reviewing Gestalt ideas in
Mach's *Analysis of Sensations*. These ideas arose
in the context of his research on Mach bands where he realized that the
mind and senses actively contribute to sensation. The
*Analysis of Sensations* is full of examples of this sort; its
central concern is to understand the dynamic relation between our
cognitive structure and experience. Our cognitive structure is
itself formed through previous experience, and our current experience
is structured by it in turn.


## 2. Biography and Early Development




Mach was born in Moravia on Feb 18, 1838. In 1840 his family
moved to a farm in Untersiebenbrunn, Lower Austria. He studied
physics at the University of Vienna from 1855 to 1861, continuing on as
a lecturer until 1864. After spending three years as Professor of
Mathematics at Graz, he received a Chair at Prague where he stayed
until 1895. For the next six years, Mach occupied a Chair in the
History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences at Vienna. He
suffered a stroke in 1898 and retired in 1901. He died near
Munich in 1916.




He credited his philosophical awakening to reading, at age fifteen,
his father's copy of Kant's *Prolegomena to any Future
Metaphysics*:



> 
> 
> The book made at the time a powerful and ineffaceable impression
> upon me, the like of which I never afterwards experienced in any of my
> philosophical reading. Some two or three years later the
> superfluity of the role played by "the thing in itself"
> abruptly dawned upon me. On a bright summer day in the open air,
> the world with my ego suddenly appeared to me as *one* coherent
> mass of sensations, only more strongly coherent in the ego.
> Although the actual working out of this thought did not occur until a
> later period, yet this moment was decisive for my whole view.
> [*AS:* 30fn]




Mach attended an Austrian Gymnasium in Moravia, graduating at
seventeen, entering the University of Vienna as a student of
mathematics and physics in 1855, and matriculating in 1860.
After graduation, he stayed in Vienna as a *privat dozent*,
supporting himself through giving lectures paid for directly by
students (which means he made very little money).




It was in these years at Vienna that Mach began his interest in
physiology. Johannes Muller and his students had started a
new school of physiology in the 1840s. Initially centered
in Berlin, it came to Vienna following the political reforms of 1848 in
the guise of Ernst Bruke and Carl Ludwig, a former a student of
Muller. This new school was characterized not just by
a general suspicion of vitalism (though Muller remained a vitalist
of sorts), but more by an agreement on the importance of the
application of physical-chemical methods to the biological
sciences. Carl Ludwig, Herman von Helmholtz, and Ernst Haeckel also
studied under Muller. Although his degree was in physics, Mach
enrolled as a student of the Medical Faculty, taking 22 hours of
classes in physiology, chemistry, and anatomy. In 1861 he taught
a course in physics for medical students, out of which he developed his
textbook, *Compendium der Physik fur Mediciner*. He
also published his first article on psychophysics, *Uber das
Sehen von Lagen und Winkeln durch die Bewegung des Auges*, where he
studied the relationship between tension in the eye muscles and
perception of form. This work also contains Mach's first
reference to Fechner, whose influential *Elements of
Psychophysics* was published in 1860. During the next years
in Vienna, he also taught classes in psychophysics and a class entitled
*Die Principien der Mechanik und mechanischen Physik in ihrer
historischen Entwicklung*, which possibly marks the start of his
interest in the history of science (though we do not know the actual
contents of the lectures). Mach was also influenced by
Helmholtz's *Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen.*




Mach's first important scientific contribution was over the
recently discovered 'Doppler theory'. In 1841,
Christian Doppler noticed that sound changes in frequency as a source
moves toward and away from an observer. By 1845 he had
generalized this to include all wave phenomena, including light.
Two prominent physicists, Petzval and Angstrom, challenged
Doppler. Mach devised a simple apparatus that demonstrated that
the Doppler effect was real, at least for sound. A six-foot tube
with a whistle at one end was mounted so as to rotate in a vertical
plane. When the listener stood in the plane of the axis of
rotation no changes in pitch could be heard. But if the observer
stood in the plane of rotation, fluctuations in pitch that corresponded
to the speed of rotation could be heard. The application of this
work to Doppler effects with light remained controversial, but Mach is
regarded as one of the first to realize the possibility of studying a
star's spectrum to understand its movements [see Blackmore 1972:
17-19; Swoboda 1974: 20-75].




Mach was highly influenced by Johann Herbart during this period, not
only through Herbart's writings, but also through Franz Lott,
Vienna's Herbartian spokesperson and Mach's good
friend. In Herbart, Mach found a mechanical approach to
psychology and physiology that coincided with Mach's early
acceptance of atomism. As his interests shifted to physiology and
psychology, the mechanical models remained, but the atomism became less
important. Eventually, the mechanical approach to physiology gave
way to an evolutionary approach, and as the mechanical approach lost
ground here atomism did as well. This trend increased the deeper
Mach went into psychophysics, and eventually turned into an
anti-mechanistic philosophy in Mach's mature thought. Mach
makes little mention of Herbart in his later writings; for instance,
only two brief references are made to Herbart in *Analysis of
Sensations*, both in the context of reflections on his intellectual
development.




In 1864 Mach received an appointment in mathematics at Graz.
For the first time he had the money and freedom to carry out his own
experiments. In 1866 he exchanged his math chair for one in
physics. While at Graz he had personal contact with Fechner and
carried out his important work on Mach Bands. It was in this work
that Mach first made use of evolutionary theory. Mach started
work on what later became *Analysis of Sensations*, but
apparently was discouraged by Fechner's criticism. He
returned to this work twenty years later, after further developing his
own ideas. It was also in Graz that Mach first encountered Ewald
Hering's thought, both in physiology and evolution. In
Mach's first article on Mach Bands [Mach 1865] he refers to
Hering, and in 1866 Hering gave his famous address on *Unconscious
Memory* to the Vienna Academy. In 1867 Mach went to
Prague as a professor of physics. He stayed in Prague for
twenty-eight years, until 1895, whereupon he returned to Vienna. It was
in Prague that his mature thought developed.




Mach's name is, of course, associated with the speed of sound,
where Mach 1 means the speed of sound in a given medium. Since the
speed of sound varies with the density of the medium it is traveling
through, Mach numbers are not absolute quantities but relational
ones. In the late 1860s developments in gun and artillery technology
produced projectiles that traveled faster than sound vibrations. This
was realized over a period of time as two effects were
investigated--a second loud 'boom', distinct from the
usual one of the explosion, as well as a different type of wound. It
was the latter that began Mach's interest. In 1868 warring
European powers had signed The St. Petersburg Declaration that banned
a new type of bullet that exploded on impact, thus causing
'crater' type wounds. Soon thereafter, however, similar
types of 'crater' wounds appeared again. Various theories
over their cause were put forward, leading Mach to investigate. By
1885 Mach had worked out the details of supersonic motion, along the
way developing high-speed photographic techniques. Most importantly
for engineers, Mach Number is the ratio of the speed of the object to
the speed of sound in the given medium; his work is essential to
modern aerodynamics, and through it the word 'Mach' has
bizarrely entered into popular culture as an icon for razors, sound
systems, fighter pilots, and high speed fuels.




Mach's early intellectual development was very much a product
of the outstanding developments in the sciences of his time.
Whereas a generation before, there existed only one truly mature
science, physics, by the early 1860s both psychology and biology
had entered the scientific scene. Previously, scientifically
based views on reality were essentially Newtonian-mechanistic.
After Darwin and Fechner, the new sciences of psychology and
evolutionary theory opened up new areas of philosophic-scientific
interaction. The possibility of a new scientific view opened up,
one based upon these new sciences, and sought to displace the Newtonian
paradigm with one based upon developmental orientations.


## 3. Psychology and the Life Sciences


### 3.1 Gustav Fechner



> 
> 
> My natural bent for the study of these questions received its
> strongest stimulus twenty-five years ago from Fechner's
> *Elemente der Psychophysik* ... [*AS*:
> xxxvi]




The single greatest influence upon Mach was Fechner; this cannot be
overstated. Fechner's *The Elements of
Psychophysics* was published in 1860, but Mach was aware of the
ideas in it before. The definitive account of Fechner is Michael
Heidelberger's book *Nature from Within* [2004].




Fechner founded experimental psychology by developing a method of
'measuring' the psychical. Our senses have
thresholds of perception; that is, given any amount of stimulation of a
sense, there is an amount more of that stimulation which is required
for us to notice it. Furthermore, that amount increases
logarithmically as the base-line sensation increases. This holds
true, with complications and variations, for all of our
sensations. The import was that there is a mathematical
relationship between the external world and the inner, between the
physical and the psychological. It was then possible to talk
about these dual aspects of reality in a neutral manner (see Neutral
Monism). Fechner uses the word 'elements' for this
purpose, and Mach's elements are directly related to them. With
some loss, embed Fechnerian methodology within nineteenth century evolutionary theory,
and apply it to the categories of physics, and we get Machian
epistemology.


### 3.2 Mach Bands




In 1865 Mach published, "On the effect of the spatial
distribution of the light stimulus on the retina," the first of a
series of remarkable articles on what are now known today as Mach
Bands.



> 
> ![mach bands](mdouble.jpg)
>   
> 
> Mach Bands (c) Alan Stubbs, from
>  Perceptual Stuff.
>   
> 
> *Reproduced with permission*.
> 




The thin dark bands along the outer edges of the gradients and the
thin light bands along the inner edges of the gradients are optical
illusions. The cause of this effect is due to contrast perception; we
over process at boundaries and under process where there is
constancy. In fact sensory response can even stop with unchanging
stimulation. Mach is credited for discovering lateral inhibition in
our sense organs, the idea that our senses pre-process information
before sending it to the brain.




Before this period, optical illusions were understood as just that,
errors in judgment, quirks of the brain. The sense organs were
seen as simple media with a direct link to the brain. Their only
role was to transmit a sensation to the brain, where it was then
interpreted. Mach argued that the processing does *not*
all occur in the brain. The quirks of judgment are not due to
processing errors in the brain, but innate features of the senses
themselves.




The immediate significance of this was that it provided a strong
argument against direct representationalist theories of
perception. There simply is no isomorphism between reality and
appearance. But Mach took this even further, embedding it within
his evolutionary Fechnerian framework.




Mach argued that perception works through perceiving the relations
between stimuli. And this process is at the root of all
life. The same process that drives evolution, drives perception,
and even (as we shall see shortly) drives science.



> 
> 
> Since every retinal point perceives itself, so to speak, as above or
> below the average of its neighbors, there results a characteristic type
> of perception. Whatever is near the mean of the surroundings becomes
> effaced, whatever is above or below is disproportionately brought into
> prominence. One could say that the retina schematizes and
> caricatures. The teleological significance of this process is
> clear in itself. It is an analog of abstraction and of the
> formation of concepts. [Mach 1868, in Ratliff 1965: 306]




That which is constant receives less attention, that which varies
must be brought into equilibrium. It is this process of bringing
contrasts into equilibrium which is at the basis of all organic
processes, evolutionary, developmental, and perceptual. The
organism is a dynamic system that has innate tendencies to
self-regulation and equilibrium. When equilibrium is disturbed,
which can happen on a variety of levels, the organism works to form a
new equilibrium. The senses are not things that got passively
written on, but rather things that interact with environments.
Life is not mechanistic but teleological.




And this is not an accident, for can we imagine life
otherwise? Mach asks us to consider the following:



> 
> 
> Let us first ask how we would find our way in the visual world if we
> would perceive, not relations of, but only differences in,
> illumination. One and the same thing in the same surroundings
> would become immediately unrecognizable with the slightest alteration
> of light intensity, such as when a cloud covers the sun. Should
> we still want to find our way, we would then have to habituate
> ourselves to maintain equal levels of light intensity, for instance by
> closing and opening our eyes. In fact, if this god of the
> psychophysical law were non-existent, the organism itself would have to
> devise it and, if the Darwinian theory is correct, it has devised
> it. The seeing of light intensity relations, within certain
> limits, is necessary for the existence of organisms. [Mach 1868 in
> Ratliff 1965: 300]




We do not perceive the world in itself, Mach claims. If we did
we would perceive chaos. Thus we have evolved senses that
perceive contrasts of perception, relations of perception.
Sensations by themselves can have no organic meaning; only the
relations of sensations to one another can have meaning.
Perception, Mach believed, is never perception of direct stimuli.


### 3.3 Gestalt Theory




This central Machian insight that perception is always relational and
constructed lies at the origins of Gestalt Theory. The seminal article
of Gestalt Theory, Christian von Ehrenfels' 1890
"Uber Gestaltqualitaten," begins with a
review of these ideas, found in Mach's 1886 *Analysis of
Sensations*. Sensations are not simply raw experiences, but the
interaction of experience with a pre-formed cognitive structure. For
instance, when we hear a known melody, we recognize it no matter what
key it is played in. It can be hummed, buzzed, or strummed on a
guitar. Furthermore, even if one or more notes are incorrect, we still
recognize it. Mach asks, "what constitutes a melody?" It
seems incorrect to say that the actual sound vibrations constitute the
melody as we have just seen that numerous different sounds can make
the same melody. But on the other hand, it seems empirically odd to
say that a melody is not constituted out of its sounds. The actual
melody, then, exists in our ability to recognize it. It is formed by
experience of one or more examples of the melody, but it is an
idealization of that experience. Significantly, the idealization
captures not the actual sounds, but the *relationships* of the
sounds to one another. Thus a melody can be sung in a high or low
pitch, etc., but as long as the relationships remain the same we
recognize it as the same melody. For Mach, this process is at the
basis of all perception. Experience requires an '*a
priori*', but that *a priori* is itself formed by
experience. This process is also at the root of evolutionary
processes.


### 3.4 Haeckel, Hering and Evolutionary Theory




 Nineteenth century evolutionary theory is complicated in that in the
cultures which most obviously experienced a widespread acceptance of
evolution, inspired apparently by Darwin's 1859 publication
of *Origin of the Species*, evolutionary ideas had already been
present and Darwin's mechanism for evolutionary change, natural
selection, was not necessarily accepted. Rather, more deeply
teleological accounts of nature were often put forward within an
evolutionary framework. Mach came of intellectual age in 1860, right
when this explosion of evolutionary ideas was starting. Unlike the
disciplines of psychology and physics, he makes no contributions to
evolutionary theory; however, his entire system is located within an
evolutionary framework. This framework is not one that he argues for;
rather, it was the metaphysics (yes, metaphysics) he adapted from his
nineteenth century German intellectual culture. The two immediate
influences on Mach in this regard were Herring and Haeckel, or at
least we can turn to their writings to understand the evolutionary
tradition Mach was part of.



The greatest popularizer of evolutionary theory in the nineteenth
century was of course Ernst Haeckel. Although he is now best known for
his infamous maxim, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny",
his larger project was to put forward an evolutionary metaphysics; in
particular to offer a monistic unified account of our reality. His
project, overlapping significantly with that of Mach and Herring,
sought to embed the developments of psychology within a theory of
evolutionary development; evolution was the evolution of not just the
species but also of the psyche.




In late nineteenth century continental Europe a different notion of
'direction' existed than the one that Darwin directly
attacked. Whereas the theory of natural selection maintains that
evolution is a directionless process having no guiding factor or end
point, relying rather on selection within particular environments on
random variations thrown up by the chaos of nature, Hering, Haeckel,
and Mach were part of a German tradition which held that there is an
inner telos in nature. Hering and Mach were atheists, and disbelieved
in a soul, but still accepted the idea that nature had internal
direction. As will be shown later, this idea of internal
direction extends for Mach all the way up to his ideas on the purpose
of science.




Hering was Mach's close friend, political ally, academic
partner, and second only to Fechner in terms of total influence.
Hering was also a fellow Fechnerian (he studied under Fechner), and he
shared both Mach's bio-psychological orientation and nativist
theories of spatial intuition. Hering is known for his work in
binocular vision and for his debates with Helmholtz over color vision,
and also for his address to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna,
"On Memory as a Universal Function of Organized
Matter".


### 3.5 Monism




All three were also leaders in the Monist movement. It is no accident
that one of the oldest philosophy journals is *The Monist*
(started in 1888). A look through its early volumes reveals a mixture
of scientific applications to the various categories of human
existence. Mach was a frequent contributor, and indeed a good friend
of the editor, Paul Carus, who also arranged the English translation
and publication of many of Mach's works. In
1906, *Monistenbund,* a monistic society, was formed with the
intention of including everyone who believed that there was only one
reality. Haeckel and Ostwald were active members and tried without
success to bring in Mach with an offer of the presidency in 1912. Mach
wrote back:



> 
> 
> There are as many different monisms as there are people in it.
> Monism is provisionally a *goal*, after which we all strive, but
> is scarcely anything fixed or sufficient ... It seems to me
> ... ludicrous to found a kind of religious sect, while
> refusing to consider philosophical questions [as to its
> nature]. But this is not so terribly important in so far as the
> movement is limited to a small circle of intellectuals. But if it
> expands more widely, then it will probably let loose a kind of
> counterreformation for which I definitely have *no sympathy*.
> [Blackmore 1972: 193-4]
> 
> 


## 4. Philosophy of Science


### 4.1 Historical Critique




Mach wrote a number of widely read science history texts; in a sense
they are archaeologies of science, digging at the past to critically
elucidate the present. Machian history can also be seen in the context
of German nineteenth century thought; Hegel, David Strauss, Nietzsche,
and Marx all offered historical frameworks for their various
social-philosophical positions. They also saw their own critiques as
playing a crucial role in the new order that was to follow. That is,
each of their works placed itself at the juncture of history, where
their writing self-consciously was to influence the next stage that it
had predicted. Certainly d'Alembert, Herschel, Whewell, and Mill had
written histories of science before Mach, but it was Mach who wrote
critical history in the above sense. The interesting aspect of Mach's
critique was that it actually had an effect upon science. *Science
of Mechanics* deserves mention in the history of physics.


### 4.2 Biological Origins of Science




Mach puts science on a continuum with earlier human activity, in
fact with earlier animal activity. What began as simple
adaptations that allowed instinctive responses to immediate conditions,
gradually evolved into ever more complex capacities for
response. Gradually life acquired memory and thus an
awareness of a wider field of spatial-temporal relations than is
present immediately to the senses. Memory then grew beyond
individual memory and became communicated culturally. Science is
a direct outgrowth of this deep natural process:



> 
> 
> Lower animals living under simple, constant and favorable conditions
> adapt themselves to immediate circumstances through their innate
> reflexes. This usually suffices to maintain individuals and species
> for a suitable period. An animal can withstand more intricate and
> less stable conditions only if it can adapt to a wider range of
> spatial and temporal surroundings. This requires a farsightedness in
> space and time which is met first by more perfect sense organs, and
> with mounting demands by a development in the life of the imagination.
> Indeed an organism that possesses memory has wider spatial and
> temporal surroundings in its mental field of vision than it could
> reach through its senses. It perceives, as it were, even those
> regions that adjoin the directly visible, seeing the approach of prey
> or foe before any sense organ announces them. What guarantees to
> primitive man a measure of advantage over his animal fellows is
> doubtless only the strength of his individual memory, which is
> gradually reinforced by the communicated memory of forebears and
> tribe. Likewise, what essentially marks progress in civilization is
> that noticeably wider regions of space and time are drawn within the
> scope of human attention. With the partial relief that a rising
> civilization affords, to begin with through division of labor,
> development of trades and so on, the individual's life is focused on a
> smaller range of facts and gains in strength, while that of society as
> a whole does not lose in scope. Gradually the activity of thinking
> thus invigorated may itself become a calling. Scientific thought
> arises out of popular thought, and so completes the continuous series
> of biological development that begins with the first simple
> manifestations of life..... Indeed, the formation of scientific
> hypotheses is merely a further degree of development of instinctive
> and primitive thought, and all the transitions between them can be
> demonstrated. [*KE:* 171]




In an article to which Mach often refers, he writes: "Here I
wish simply to consider the growth of natural *knowledge* in the
light of the theory of evolution. For knowledge, too, is a
product of organic nature. And although ideas, as such, do
not comport themselves in all respects like independent organic
individuals, and although violent comparisons should be avoided, still
if Darwin reasoned rightly, the general imprint of evolution and
transformation must be noticeable in ideas also." [*PL:*
218] And later, "We are prepared, thus, to regard ourselves and
every one of our ideas as a product and a subject of universal
evolution; and in this way we shall advance sturdily and unimpeded
along the paths which the future will throw open to us."
[*PL:* 233]


### 4.3 Biological Purpose of Science




Once science is placed within an evolutionary context, Mach's
teleological views of evolution (see section 3.4) become significant
for his philosophy of science. The developmental processes of
evolution have given rise to this complex human activity we call
science, which now itself is participating in the processes of
evolution. Just as the eye, for instance, has evolved to better
aid us in adapting to a greater variety of landscapes, so science has
evolved to better aid us in adapting to the world:



> 
> 
> Science apparently grew out of biological and cultural development
> as its most superfluous offshoot. However, today we can hardly
> doubt that it has developed into the factor that is biologically and
> culturally the most beneficial. Science has taken over the task
> of replacing tentative and unconscious adaptation by a faster variety
> that is fully conscious and methodical. [*KE:* 361]
> 
> 




Science is both an *outcome* of this process (it has
biological roots), and also now is *part* of this process (it
has a biological function continuous with other evolutionary
processes). Leaves, hearts, brains, eyes, and science are on a
continuum in as much as they arose out of adaptive processes and now
serve the biological function of survival and further adaptation.



> 
> 
> Man is governed by the struggle for self preservation: his
> whole activity is in its service, and only achieves with richer
> resources, what the reflexes accomplish in the lower organisms under
> simpler conditions of life. Every recollection, every idea, every
> piece of knowledge has a value originally only in so far as it directly
> furthers man in the direction indicated. [*PH:* 336]
> 
> 




It should be noted that Mach does not argue or provide evidence for
this evolutionary view of science; he seems rather to adopt it from
ideas that were being circulated in the later half of the nineteenth
century. Nonetheless, references to a deep evolutionary perspective
permeate his writings. For instance:



> 
> The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed
> human with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible.
> No other scientific ideal can be realized, and any other must be
> meaningless. [*AS:* 37]


And also:



> 
> 
> The adaptation of thoughts to facts, accordingly, is the aim of all
> scientific research. In this, science only deliberately and
> consciously pursues what in daily life goes on unnoticed and of its own
> accord. [*AS:* 316]



This evolutionary perspective even plays a critical role in his
understanding of physics. For instance, in his famous exchange with
Planck (see 5.3), Mach repeatedly refers to his biologico-economical
theory of knowledge as an important part of view of the physical
world.


### 4.4 Economy and Unity of Science



> 
> 
> One and the same view underlies both my epistemological-physical
> writings and my present attempt to deal with the physiology of the
> senses -- the view, namely, that all metaphysical elements are to
> be eliminated as superfluous and as destructive of the economy of
> science. [*AS:* xxxviii]




The idea of an economy of nature dates back at least to Linnaeus, is
present throughout nineteenth century evolutionary ideas, and finds
another home in Mach. Nature is an organized and frugal
system. Excess exists only in a vestigial sense; everything has
its place. For Darwin, the economy of nature had a ready explanation in
natural selection, and the non-economical aspects of nature, such as
vestigial organs, took on great significance. A logic of biology
took hold: where once economy was an observed feature of nature,
it now became a necessary feature. Even the apparent
non-economical aspects were ultimately economical. Where once
economy required explanation, it now became the explanation. A
phenomenon of nature turned into a force of nature. As is typical
for Mach, widely accepted biological principles become uncritically
held cornerstones of his epistemology.




Of course, the metaphor of economy is also used in economics.
According to Mach's own recollections of his intellectual
development in a 1910 essay, "The Guiding Principles of My
Scientific Theory," he first understood science as
'*okonomisch'* in 1864, through discussions with his
friend E. Hermann, a political economist. In the same passage,
Mach proceeds to note that he was well prepared for this idea through
his biological background, and in fact the two combined to form what
became his 'biological-economical theory of knowledge'.
[Mach 1910: 30-31]




The purpose of science is to give the most economical description of
nature as possible, because science is to provide conceptions which can
help us better orient ourselves to our world, and if science is
uneconomical then it is useless in this regard. Put another way,
Mach's reason for insisting that economy must be a guiding
principle in accepting or rejecting a theory is that uneconomical
theories cannot fulfill their biological function, which, as we have
seen previously, he insists is (in a descriptive sense) the function of
science. The biological purpose of science is the improvement or
the better adaptation of memory in service of the organism's
development:



> 
> 
> The aim of scientific economy is to provide us with a picture of the
> world as complete as possible -- connected, unitary, calm and not
> materially disturbed by new occurrences: *in short a world picture
> of the greatest possible stability.* The nearer science approaches
> this aim, the more capable will it be of controlling the disturbances
> of practical life, and thus *serving the purpose out of which its
> first germs were developed*. [*PH:* 336, italics
> added]




Disturbances in environments cause maladaptations; progressive
adaptation only has meaning in reference to that which is stable.
Science must be economical so that a stable basis for our orientation
can be built up, and this leads to a crucial point: as science
encompasses more and more of the world, and as these theories work
themselves into our unconscious memory, more and more of the world
becomes part of our pre-existing cognitive structure. That is, the role
of science is to improve our orientation to the world.




Let us look in depth at a discussion of these issues occurring in
*Science and Mechanics* in a chapter entitled "The Economy
of Science." The section occurs toward the end of the book,
and begins: "It is the object of science to replace, or
*save* experiences, by the reproduction and anticipation of
facts in thought. Memory is handier than experience, and often
answers the same purpose." [*SM:* 577] The
economical role of science is to allow us to understand and react to
nature prior to experience; just as a newborn chicken knows what to do
as soon as it is hatched due to its accumulated memory (it
doesn't need to learn on its own as the learning has already been
done by its ancestors), so we now learn from science how to anticipate
the world. Our memory encompasses more and more of the world,
thus allowing better and better orientation.




The drive for economy is itself a biological instinct, which science
must thus also fulfill. In a larger sense, economy is tied to the
innate tendency toward survival or search for better orientation
discussed earlier. Evolution is guided by these principles; life
as a product of evolution has a tendency toward these principles, and
we as humans have these tendencies hard-wired into us--even to the
point that our very conception of self-existence arises out of it; in
*Analysis of Sensations*, the ego is described as arising from
an "ideal mental economical unity." [*AS:* 22]




An important application of this idea of economy occurs when two
theories, formerly separate, come in contact. For Mach this is a
central concern: he is driven to unify psychology and
physics. At issue here is the economical requirement of needing a
single orientating perspective: "But anyone who has in mind
the gathering up of the sciences into a single whole, has to look for a
conception to which he can hold in every department of
science." [*AS:* 312] When theories come in
contact with each other, adaptation of one to the other must take
place: "Epistemological criticism [is not a problem for the
physicist]. But when it is a question of bringing into connection
two adjacent departments, each of which has been developed in its
special way, the connection cannot be effected by means of the limited
conceptions of a narrow special department. By means of more
general considerations, conceptions have to be created which shall be
adequate for the wider domain." [*AS:* 313] It is
uneconomical to have one theory for physics and another for psychology;
the mind demands that the two be brought together. Attempts at
such mutual adaptation have so far been failures and Mach hopes that
his ideas can facilitate this:



> 
> 
> To the physicist, qua physicist, the idea of "body"
> ... [assists in] a real facilitation of view, and is not the cause
> of disturbance.... When, however, physics and psychology meet,
> the ideas held in the one domain prove to be untenable in the
> other. From the attempt at mutual adaptation arise the various
> atomic and monadistic theories -- which, however, never attain
> their end. If we regard sensations, in the sense above defined
> (p. 13), as the elements of the world, the problems referred to appear
> to be disposed of in all essentials, and the first and most important
> adaptation to be consequently effected. This fundamental view
> (without any pretension to being a philosophy for all eternity) can at
> present be adhered to in all fields of experience ...
> [*AS:* 32]




The inherent non-metaphysical unity of the physical and psychical is
not concocted, rather the disunity is what is artificial.
Mach's ideas on the unity of science, then, arise out of his
bio-economical model of science.


### 4.5 Nature of Scientific Change and Progress




Finally, Mach can be seen as the precursor of what is today one of the
major epistemological metaphors of scientific change. Mach offers a
selectionist account of group-level change consisting of selection
upon naturally produced variation, passed on through processes of
heredity. As with Darwinian evolution, scientific variation itself is
not directed. Emphasizing the importance of natural variation, Mach
had a Feyerabendian tolerance of nonscientific beliefs--the
familiar point being that it is better to tolerate some error than risk
losing variation which might yield fruit later. As an indication of
variation's importance, several chapters in his various books are
directed almost entirely to this subject. Variation is not something
which we consciously produce, but rather something which happens by
accident.




The mind is not able to come up with new ideas on its own, that is,
it is unable to direct creativity. Thus, variation is not
directed, but science relies on fantasy, chance, luck, etc., for
production of its ideas. Once produced, scientists choose those
ideas which best fit the facts. Mach also comments on the debates
over whether reasoning, inductive or deductive, can produce knowledge,
arguing that reasoning cannot by itself produce knowledge, but rather
can only operate on existing variation: "Thus syllogism and
induction do not create new knowledge, but merely make sure that there
is no contradiction between our various insights and show clearly how
these are connected, and lead our attention to different sides of some
particular insight, teaching us to recognize it in different
forms. Obviously, then, the genuine source from which the
enquirer gains knowledge must lie elsewhere." [*KE:*
231]




Although the mind cannot direct the creation of ideas, it can direct
the *selection* of them. Selection occurs when the
scientists choose the theories, out of the pool of available variation,
which best fit the data and other pre-existing ideas. It is also
worth noting that Mach talks of the tendency for resistance to change
as being both necessary and problematic for science. Mach was not
only one of the founders of Gestalt Theory, but also applied its core
concepts to the process of science. Packaged together with his use of
history to elucidate science, he anticipates Kuhn's ideas on
scientific change and progressive rationality.


## 5. Physics




Just as the early Mach was influenced by the revolutions in
psychology and biology, the mature Mach was deeply involved in the
revolutions in physics, though remaining a critic of the new physics
just as much as he had been of the old. Both Planck and Einstein
paid their homage to the person who created a culture of critique
within which they developed their ideas. They also came to
criticize what they saw as his stubborn refusal to accept their new
ideas.




To twentieth philosophy, Mach is best known as a positivist who
influenced Logical Positivism, a philosopher of physics who influenced
Einstein, and an empiricist who denied the reality of atoms. None of
this is incorrect, but to understand Mach as limited to physics is a
huge mistake. Mach's influence upon physics and its philosophy was
enormous; the mistake has been to not understand the roots of Mach's
ideas, a mistake which took place early in the twentieth century as a
new brand of positivism/empiricism entered the scene (one which turned
away from the life sciences as the scientific driving force of
positivist epistemology and focused on the new developments in the
foundations of physics and logic). This encyclopedia has several
entries on the history and philosophy of physics (see links below)
which detail Mach's ideas, contributions, and influences (in
particular, his famous critique of Newtonian Absolute Space and Time,
as well as his relationship to Einstein). What follows is a placement
of his ideas within the context of his larger thought.


### 5.1 Space




Mach perhaps writes more about space than any single other topic;
the *Analysis of Sensations* is dominated by discussions about
it (Chapters 6 to 10 are devoted, more or less, exclusively to it) as
is *Space and Geometry*. His *Science of Mechanics*
contains his famous analysis of absolute space. The starting point of
Mach's thought is that *physiological space* is different
from *geometrical space.* The idea of physiological space was
not new with Mach; apparently initiated by Muller, it was
discussed by both Helmholtz and Hering. Physiological space is the
space constructed by our cognitive structure. It is not something we
intentionally create, but rather it is a product of unconscious
adaptation, and as such, may be a source of *a priori*
truths. Geometrical space, on the other hand, is an intellectual
construction, "reached for the most part by purposeful
experience." [*SG:* 5] While physiological space is
completely psychological, geometrical space is an abstraction on
physiological space. Neither is an 'objective' or
'absolute' space.




Whereas geometrical space is unbounded, infinite, and homogeneous (at
least in its Euclidean form), physiological space is highly bounded,
finite, and non-uniform. Geometrical space is detached from our
emotional psyche, but physiological space is intertwined with basic
emotions: a tiger nearby in physiological space brings about different
emotions than a tiger far away in physiological space. Similarly,
upness and downness, rightness and leftness are not just abstract
directions but have physiological, and thus psychological
meaning. When objects in physiological space are moved, their (apparent)size
changes (similarly, when we move, the size of objects in physiological
space also changes). And, importantly, physiological space does not,
at least in its origins, have a metric. The origins of physiological
space are in unconscious biological need, whereas the origins of
geometrical space are in physiological space and intellectual
development.


### 5.2 Measurement




This brings us to the problem of measurement. Normally
when we measure an interval we believe we are indeed measuring space or
time. However, measurement relies upon comparison.
This was important for Mach: we do not measure 'space', but
rather we compare our spatial sensations. All measurement
requires the use of a standard, and since any standard we pick is of
the same nature as the thing we are measuring, we do not truly measure
anything (if by this we mean an absolute measurement):



> 
> 
> But we do not measure mere space; we require a material standard of
> measurement, and with this the whole system of manifold sensations is
> brought back again. It is only intuitional sense-presentations that can
> lead to the formulation of the equations of physics, and it is
> precisely in such presentations that the interpretation of these
> equations consists. Thus, though the equations only contain
> spatial numerical measurements, these measurements, also, are merely
> the ordering principle which tells us out of what members of the series
> of sensational elements we have to construct our picture of the
> world. [*AS:* 343]




When we measure the spatial dimensions of an object, we are comparing
it to an agreed upon standard. Ultimately all standards must have
their root in physiological comparison. In this way Mach tries to
bring physics back into psychology. Physics is based upon
measurements, but measurements are ultimately physiological
comparisons. According to Mach, physics can never escape its
biological origins. Planck and Einstein accepted Mach's critique of
the old physics, that it was under the spell of concepts which were
derivative of unreflective development, but rejected Mach's claim that
physics was stuck, so to speak, in psychology.


### 5.3 Anti-Atomism



> 
> 
> ... the biological-economical interpretation of the cognitive
> process can perfectly well co-exist on peaceable, and indeed on
> friendly, terms with that of present-day physics. The only real
> point of difference which has so far come to light concerns the belief
> in the reality of atoms. Here again, Planck can hardly find words
> degrading enough for such wrong headedness .... After exhorting
> the reader, with Christian charity, to respect his opponent, P. brands
> me, in the well-known biblical words, as a "false
> prophet." It appears that the physicists are on the way to
> founding a church; they are already using a church's traditional
> weapons. To this I answer simply: "If belief in the
> reality of atoms is so important to you, I cut myself off from the
> physicist's mode of thinking, I do not wish to be a true
> physicist, I renounce all scientific respect--in short: I
> decline with thanks the communion of the faithful. I prefer
> freedom of thought." ["The Guiding Principles of My Scientific
> Theory of Knowledge and Its Reception by My
> Contemporaries." 37-38]




Mach's opposition to atomism has become one of his best known
legacies, with Mach seen as an anti-realist about unobservable
entities. While anti-realist arguments can indeed be found in
Mach, their origins lie not in philosophical skepticism but in his
bio-psychological view of science. Furthermore, his
concerns about atoms were often specific to the various competing
theories of the time. It should be noted that the issue of
atomism was a central scientific controversy of this period; there were
a variety of theories of atoms being put forward as well as varieties
of alternatives. In his *Principles of the Theory of
Heat*, Mach aligned himself with a phenomenological approach to
thermodynamics--a temporarily fruitful research program that avoided
the problems of positing theoretical causal entities.
Mach's experimental research was not in this area, but at stake
was not just the reality of atoms but an understanding of
science. Mach's attitude toward atoms was an outgrowth of a
view of science.




He became embroiled in a long-standing dispute with Boltzmann,
propounder of the kinetic theory of gasses. Boltzmann and Mach
ended up agreeing in essence: if atomic theory was fruitful it should
be used, but adopted what today might be considered an
anti-metaphysical stance toward a theory that was still largely
unsubstantiated. It is generally agreed that it was not until
1905 with Einstein's study of Brownian motion that the kinetic
theory of molecules found full verification.




Mach's views on atomism are most clearly presented in an
exchange with Planck. In 1909 Planck wrote an essay "The
Unity of the Physical World-Picture", which contained a severe
criticism of Mach's philosophy. Mach replied in 1910, with
"The Guiding Principles of My Scientific Theory of Knowledge and
Its Reception by My Contemporaries." Planck responded in
1910 with "On Mach's Theory of Physical Knowledge: A
Reply."




At issue were differences on how to make science free of human
subjectivity, and how to achieve a unified science. Planck [1909]
argues that while we once defined heat according to sensations, the
study of heat has gone beyond this, now being under the purview of
electrodynamics and kinetic theory; similarly, tones and color are now
understood as frequencies or wavelengths. Although physics had
its beginnings in the analysis of sense impressions, its current
success is due to removing these anthropomorphic elements. Planck
formulates a vision of a human-independent science in reaction to
Mach's claim that science is human-dependent.




Planck thought that physics can go beyond psychological dependency
by basing itself on psychologically independent universal
constants: "the constants appearing in the laws of heat
radiation in free ether, like the constants of gravity, have a
universal character and involve no reference to any special substance
or any special body" [1909]. They are human-independent in a way
that a unit like a centimeter is not. These constants can be used
to "establish units of length, time, volume and temperature,
which must of necessity retain their meaning for all time and for all
cultures, even extra-terrestrial and extra-human ones"
[1909].




Mach's response is one of his last statements of position:



> 
> 
> I have no doubt that if, somewhere in the universe a creature
> organized like ourselves could make observations ... it would
> perceive a universe working similarly to that we ourselves describe
> .... As for the reality of atoms: I have no doubt that if
> atomic theory corresponds to the reality given by the senses, the
> conclusions drawn from it will also bear some relation to the facts
> -- though what relation remains unclear. The distance from
> the glass of the first dark ring in reflected light corresponds to
> one-half of the period of Newton's 'fits', but to one
> quarter of Young and Fresnel's 'wavelength'.
> The findings of atomic theory, likewise, can undergo a variety of
> convenient reinterpretations, even if we are in no great hurry to take
> them for realities. [Mach 1910: 36-37]