Ernst Mach - Science Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

View all Ernst Mach Quotes
Economy of communication and of apprehension is of the very essence of science. Herein lies its pacificatory, its enlightening, its refining element.

Ernst Mach
The belief in occult magic powers of nature has gradually died away, but in its place a new belief has arisen, the belief in the magical power of science.

Ernst Mach
All science has its origin in the needs of life.

Ernst Mach
The object of natural science is the connection of phenomena; but the theories are like dry leaves which fall away when they have long ceased to be the lungs of the tree of science.

Ernst Mach
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
Science has almost made greater progress through that which she has known how to ignore than by that which she has taken into account.

Ernst Mach
Every one who busies himself with science recognizes how unsettled and indefinite the notions are which he has brought with him from common life, and how, on a minute examination of things, old differences are effaced and new ones introduced.

Ernst Mach
Physical science does not pretend to be a complete view of the world; it simply claims that it is working toward such a complete view in the future.

Ernst Mach
Purely mechanical phenomena do not exist... are abstractions, made, either intentionally or from necessity, for facilitating our comprehension of things. The science of mechanics does not comprise the foundations, no, nor even a part of the world, but only an aspect of it.

Ernst Mach
Science is communicated by instruction, in order that one man may profit by the experience of another and be spared the trouble of accumulating it for himself; and thus, to spare posterity, the experiences of whole generations are stored up in libraries.

Ernst Mach
Is science itself anything more than — a business? Is not its task to acquire with the least possible work, in the least possible time, with the least possible thoughts, the greatest possible part of eternal truth?

Ernst Mach
Every philosopher has his own private view of science, and every scientist his private philosophy.

Ernst Mach
That branch of physics which is at once the oldest and the simplest and which is therefore treated as introductory to other departments of this science, is concerned with the motions and equilibrium of masses. It bears the name of mechanics.

Ernst Mach
The student of mathematics often finds it hard to throw off the uncomfortable feeling that his science, in the person of his pencil, surpasses him in intelligence,—an impression which the great Euler confessed he often could not get rid of. This feeling finds a sort of justification when we reflect that the majority of the ideas we deal with were conceived by others, often centuries ago. In a great measure it is really the intelligence of other people that confronts us in science.

Ernst Mach
Physical science began in the witch's kitchen. It now embraces the organic and inorganic worlds, and with the physiology of articulation and the theory of the senses, has even pushed its researches, at times impertinently, into the province of mental phenomena.

Ernst Mach
Science throws her treasures, not like a capricious fairy into the laps of a favored few, but into the laps of all humanity, with a lavish extravagance that no legend ever dreamt of !

Ernst Mach
I only seek to adopt in physics a point of view that need not be changed the moment our glance is carried over into the domain of another science; for ultimately, all must form one whole.

Ernst Mach
Science does not create facts from facts, but simply orders known facts.

Ernst Mach
The knowledge of the development of a science rests on the study of writings in their historical sequence and in their historical connection.

Ernst Mach
The greatest advances of science have always consisted in some successful formulation, in clear, abstract, and communicable terms, of what was instinctively known long before and of thus making it the permanent possession of humanity.

Ernst Mach
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
The function of science, as we take it, is to replace experience. Thus, on the one hand, science must remain in the province of experience, but, on the other, must hasten beyond it, constantly expecting confirmation, constantly expecting the reverse. Where neither confirmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned.

Ernst Mach
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
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
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