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The Beginning
He was born in Moravia and later moved to a farm in Austria.
He studied physics at the University of Vienna from 1855 - 1861.
He was a lecturer afterwards until 1864 and made very little money. -
Philosophical awakening
Kant's, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Read at age 15.
This reading left a large impression on Mach and he never was influenced the same. "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" -
PHILOSOPHY/EMPIRICIST
In philosophy, he is best known for his influence upon the Vienna Circle (a predecessor of which was named the Ernst Mach Verein), for his famous anti-metaphysical attitude (which developed into the verifiability theory of meaning), for his anti-realist stance in opposition to atomism, and in general for his positivist-empiricist approach to epistemology. -
Quotes
Mach mentions comparing growth of knowledge to theory of evolution..."For knowledge, too, is a product of organic nature...if Darwin reasoned rightly, the general imprint of evolution and transformation must be noticeable in ideas also.” 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.” -
Picture
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A FOUNDER
Mach was an important historian of science, and occupied the Chair for the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences at the University of Vienna. Although previous philosophers had commented on science and many scientists had influenced philosophy, Mach more than anyone else bridged the divide; he is a founder of the philosophy of science. -
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Influence of Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein studies the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach, whose stridently empiricist, seeing-is-believing brand of philosophy demanded a complete rejection of metaphysics, including notions of absolute space and time, and the existence of atoms.Mach’s rejection of absolute space and time helped to shape Einstein’s special theory of relativity which he formulated in 1905 .... and he later declared that “Mach was as good at mechanics as he was wretched at philosophy.”
