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Sympathy for the devil: Reconsidering Ernst Mach’s empiricism

John Blackmore, Ryoichi Itagaki and Setsuko Tanaka (eds): Ernst Mach’s Prague. Bethesda and Tokyo: Sentinel Open Press, 2010, 476pp, $40.00 HB John Blackmore, Ryoichi Itagaki and Setsuko Tanaka (eds): Ernst Mach’s philosophy: Pro and Con. Bethesda and Tokyo: Sentinel Open Press, 2009, 252pp, $25.00 HB

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Notes

  1. He only suggests the idea very vaguely: “the natural investigator must feel the need of further insight of knowledge of the immediate connections, say of the masses of the universe. There will hover before him as an ideal an insight into the principles of the whole matter, from which accelerated motions and inertial motions result in the same way” (1960, 296).

  2. As I have written in my (2003), ‘metaphysics’ for Mach does not mean unobserved, or abstract, but rather refers to this error of injecting sensory imagery and visualizations into scientific results and models which the results do not sanction.

  3. Although Leibniz and Kant deserve some credit, as do Richard Avenarius and W. K. Clifford.

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  1. Wright State University, 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy, Dayton, OH, 45435, USA

    Erik C. Banks

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Banks, E.C. Sympathy for the devil: Reconsidering Ernst Mach’s empiricism. Metascience 21, 321–330 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-012-9672-3

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