Quotes by Ernst Mach - Page 1

Personally, people know themselves very poorly.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Knows
People
Personally
Poorly
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Physics is experience, arranged in economical order.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Experience
Science
Order
Physics
Arranged
Economical
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The ego is as little absolutely permanent as are bodies.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Body
Ego
Littles
Permanent
Bodies
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Ordinarily pleasure and pain are regarded as different from sensations.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Medicine
Pain
Philosophy
Pleasure
Sensations
Ordinarily
Regarded
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Science is the most complete presentment of facts with the least expenditure of thought
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Expenditures
Facts
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Science always has its origin in the adaptation of thought to some definite field of experience.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Adaptation
Definite
Fields
Field
Origin
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Bodies do not produce sensations, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) make up bodies.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Complexes
Elements
Medicine
Philosophy
Produce
Sensations
Soma
Bodies
Make Up
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Many an article that I myself penned twenty years ago impresses me now as something quite foreign to myself.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Impress
Twenties
Years
Years Ago
Myself Me Something
Article
Foreign
Twenty
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I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogmas.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Atoms
Follow Your Dreams
Littles
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Man is pre-eminently endowed with the power of voluntarily and consciously determining his own point of view.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Men
Point Of View
Views
Determining
Endowed
Voluntarily
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If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable, they would also have more practical importance for us.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Dream
Connected
Importance
Individualism
Our Dreams
Stable
Practical
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Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Arriving
Mean
Use
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What Mach calls a thought experiment is of course not an experiment at all. At bottom it is a grammatical investigation.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Bottom
Experiments
Investigation
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Archimedes constructing his circle pays with his life for his defective biological adaptation to immediate circumstances.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Life
Circles
Math
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The acquisition of the most elementary truth does not devolve upon the individual alone: it is pre-effected in the development of the race.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Acquisition
Doe
Race
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Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Math
May
Problem
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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.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Science
Saving
Sound
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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.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Attributes
Body
Elements
Sound
Apart
Colours
Forth
So-Called
Sounds
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Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Science
Facts
May
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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.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Space
Colour
Dependence
Instance
Luminous
Source
Temperature
Consider
Forth
Object
Spaces
Temperatures
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The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this matter, must often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and pencil surpass him in intelligence.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Intelligence
Math
Uncomfortable Feeling
Views
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Thought experiment is in any case a necessary precondition for physical experiment. Every experimenter and inventor must have the planned arrangement in his head before translating it into fact.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Science
Cases
Facts
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It would not become physical science to see in its self created, changeable, economical tools, molecules and atoms, realities behind phenomena... The atom must remain a tool for representing phenomena.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Science
Reality
Self
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The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most of our lives, and why and for what purpose we are provisionally obliged to abandon it.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Abandon
Obliged
Our Lives
Purpose
Standpoint
Tasks
Task
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When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few individual features, for a different person, were it not for the existence of the chain of memories.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Boys
Exception
Existence
Features
Memories
Ties
Youth
Chain
Different Person
Recall
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The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately returns to the general point of view of mankind.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Abandon
Intellectual
Mankind
Occupation
One Sided
Philosopher
Point Of View
Thinker
Views
Forced
Immediately
Practical
Returns
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A movement that we will to execute is never more than a represented movement, and appears in a different domain from that of the executed movement, which always takes place when the image is vivid enough.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Different
Domain
Movement
Vivid
Appears
Execute
Image
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Without renouncing the support of physics, it is possible for the physiology of the senses, not only to pursue its own course of development, but also to afford to physical science itself powerful assistance.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Assistance
Development
Physical Science
Powerful
Pursue
Senses
Support
Afford
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The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Mean
Meaningless
Perfect
Realised
Tasks
Biological
Developed
Fully
Ideal
Provide
Scientific
Task
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To us investigators, the concept 'soul' is irrelevant and a matter for laughter. But matter is an abstraction of exactly the same kind, just as good and just as bad as it is. We know as much about the soul as we do of matter.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Science
Laughter
Soul
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In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Important
Law
Reality
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All this, the positive and physical essence of mechanics, which makes its chief and highest interest for a student of nature, is in existing treatises completely buried and concealed beneath a mass of technical considerations.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Consideration
Essence
Students
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The plain man is familiar with blindness and deafness, and knows from his everyday experience that the look of things is influenced by his senses; but it never occurs to him to regard the whole world as the creation of his senses.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Men
Blindness
Creation
Deafness
Everyday
Familiar
Medicine
Philosophy
Regard
Senses
Experience Man World
Influenced
Occurs
Plain
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I once knew an otherwise excellent teacher who compelled his students to perform all their demonstrations with incorrect figures, on the theory that it was the logical connection of the concepts, not the figure, that was essential.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Science
Teacher
Essentials
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The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire for knowledge as an end in itself, but by the struggle to adapt himself favourably to the conditions of life.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Knowledge
Men
Average
Average Man
Conditions
Desire
Pure
Struggle
Life Man World
Adapt
Itself
Full
Dominated
Formed
Himself
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My table is now brightly, now dimly lighted. Its temperature varies. It may receive an ink stain. One of its legs may be broken. It may be repaired, polished, and replaced part by part. But, for me, it remains the table at which I daily write.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Broken
Ink
Legs
Polished
Remains
Replaced
Temperature
Writing
Brightly
Daily
Lighted
Receive
Stain
Table
Varies
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The history of the development of mechanics is quite indispensable to a full comprehension of the science in its present condition. It also affords a simple and instructive example or the processes by which natural science generally is developed.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Development
Example
Simple
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Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast on the whole of astronomy, whereas nothing is required but an easily effected and unimportant correction to put everything right again.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Men
Astronomy
Doubt
First Time
Hearing
Light
Stellar
Unimportant
Young Man
Cast
Correction
Easily
Required
Similarly
Whereas
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Not bodies produce sensations, but element-complexes (sensation-complexes) constitute the bodies. When the physicist considers the bodies as the permanent reality, the 'elements' as the transient appearance, he does not realise that all 'bodies' are only mental symbols for element-complexes (sensation-complexes).
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Doe
Elements
Reality
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Everyone is free to set up an opinion and to adduce proofs in support of it. Whether, though, a scientist shall find it worth his while to enter into serious investigations of opinions so advanced is a question which his reason and instinct alone can decide. If these things, in the end, should turn out to be true, I shall not be ashamed of being the last to believe them.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Science
Believe
Support
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I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but complicated enough to provide confusion.
Ernst Mach / Physicist
Confusion
Powerful
Support
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