Background
Ernst Mach was born on February 18, 1838, in Chirlitz-Turas, Moravia (now Brno, Czech Republic) to Johann Mach and Josephine Lanhaus, as the oldest among their three children.
Ernst Mach was born on February 18, 1838, in Chirlitz-Turas, Moravia (now Brno, Czech Republic) to Johann Mach and Josephine Lanhaus, as the oldest among their three children.
Ernst was tutored at home until he entered the University of Vienna, from which he graduated in 1860. In 1860, he presented his thesis on electrical charge and induction, which earned him a doctorate in physics. He also received his Habilitation the following year.
From 1860-1862, Mach worked for his mentor Andreas von Ettinghausen, as a Privatdozent in the latter’s laboratory. There, he spent years conducting experiments on optics and acoustics and also embarked on a detailed study of the Doppler Effect.
In 1864 he became professor of mathematics at Graz; in 1867 he became professor of physics at Prague, a post he held until 1895.
In 1895, he was invited to Vienna where he chaired the newly established department of the theory of inductive science. He published "Prinzipien der Wärmelehre" ("The Principle of Thermodynamics") a year later.
During his tenure as Dean of Philosophy in Vienna, he suffered a stroke in 1898, which paralysed the right half of his body. Three years later, he announced his retirement and abstained himself from being involved in further research.
However he did not let his poor health hinder his lectures, and in 1905, published "Erkenntnis und Irrtum" ("Knowledge and Error"), and five years later, his autobiography.
After suffering from a paralysing stroke, the physicist moved near Munich, to Vaterstetten, to be close to his son Ludwig.
Mach died on February 19, 1916 due to heart disease and was buried at the cemetery of Haar.
Obviously Mach's views on the nature of science derived from his analysis of human knowledge. He acknowledged his indebtedness to the English empiricists, especially George Berkeley and David Hume. To him "the world consists only of our sensations," and this phenomenalism follows the empiricist tradition of deriving "ideas" from "impressions." Knowledge consists in communicating the observed distinctions of our sensations. From Mach's views has come the tradition of distinguishing between the public and private data of sensation, that is, that part of man's sensory experience which can be confirmed by others and man's individual perceptions. On this basis Mach proposed a unified theory of the sciences. The difference between physics and psychology, material and mental, is relative to the perspective of the observer. Color can be considered physically in terms of its dependencies or psychologically in terms of its receptivity. This scientific theory consists of coherent, concise descriptions of observed phenomena.
Quotations:
"Thing, body, matter, are nothing apart from the combinations of the elements, - the colours, sounds, and so forth - nothing apart from their so-called attributes."
"A colour is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colours, upon temperatures, upon spaces, and so forth."
"Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations."
"I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogmas."
"Man is pre-eminently endowed with the power of voluntarily and consciously determining his own point of view."
"Many an article that I myself penned twenty years ago impresses me now as something quite foreign to myself."
In 1867, Ernst Mach married Ludovica Marussig in Graz. They later on had five children - four sons and one daughter.