MACH, ERNST. - German physicist and philosopher, b. at Tufany (Moravia) on 18 February 1838, d. at Haur (Monaco) on 19 February 1916. He taught physics at the Universities of Graz and Prague, and philosophy in Vienna. Famous
for his “empiriocriticism,” he is the initiator and principal representative of the modern critique of science.
Principal works: Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch dargestellt (Lipsia 1883; Italian translation by D. Gambioli, Rome 1908); Populärwissenschaftliche Vorlesungen (there 1896; Italian translation by A. Bongioanni, Turin 1900); Die Analyse der Empfindungen, etc. (Jena 1900; Italian translation by A. Vaccaro and C. Cessi, Turin 1903); Erkenntnis und Irrtum (Lipsia 1905; French translation by M. Dufour, Paris 1908).
A pure positivist and empiricist, M. reduces reality to sensation and denies any reality beyond experience. Science has a purely practical value, as a means of adaptation in the struggle for life; and the use of concepts and language, the scientific method, and the formation of physical laws and hypotheses are due exclusively to the principle of economy, whereby every individual seeks to spare himself the greatest possible number of direct experiences with the aid of mental representations and symbols. Hypotheses that introduce metaphysical or physical entities, e.g. atomic theories and mechanism, must nevertheless be rejected. Science is limited to the description of facts and the enunciation of laws; and these have value as simple restrictions which, guided by experience, are imposed upon the expectation of phenomena. Yet M. escapes the skeptical consequences of human empiricism insofar as he makes sensation itself an absolute and, consequently, science a metaphysics of sensations.