IMGr3

Ernst Much

parcntly, regardlcss of how far away an object was, łic “saw” it as the same sizc as when it was closc. Mc also had difliculty understanding the purposc of pictures. Macli wrote: “Hut that the picture of a tablc on a piane surfacc was not to be conceived as a piane painted surfacc but stood for a tablc and so was to bc imaged with all the attributes of extension was a jolce that I did nor understand.” ^ll' Nor did Mach cvcn in later ycars fully abandon his rcsistancc to pcrspcctivc art. He still tended to consider it mislcading and unnatural.

The relation bctwccn shadows on sensory objects and shading in pictures completely escaped him. He failed to noticc the former and objcctcd to the lattcr. Mc considcrd shading a pointlcss distortion and much preferred mcrc outline abstraction. “When I began to draw I regarded shading as a mere custom of artists. I once drew the portrait of our pastor, a friend of the family, and shadcd, from no neccssity, but simply from having scen something similar in other pictures, the whole half of his face black. I was subjccted for this to a sevcrc crit-icism, on tlie part of my mother, and my decply offended artist’s pride is probably the rcason that thesc facts remained so strongly impressed upon my inemory.”¹⁰

Ernst Mach also had difliculties with causal explanation: . . I my-self heard whilc still a child of four or five the hissing of the sun as it apparcntly plungcd into a pond, and on stating my obscrvation was thereupon laughed at by the grown-ups.” ¹⁷ And: “When I first camc to Vicnna from the country as a boy of four or five years, and was taken by my father upon the walls of the city’s fortifications, I was very much surprised to sec peoplc below in the moat, and could not understand how from my point of view they could havc got there, for the thought of another way of descent nevcr occurred to me.” ¹⁸ Evcn though M.ich’s perceptual and causal confusions werc probably rather common for childrcn of that age and his remembering of them not too unconimon, nonciheless, his tenacious retention of many aspects of his childhood understanding does merit some close analysis. A basie causc of this retention probably lay in his isolaiion and loneli-ness. Young Ernst and his sisters had no playmates. Thcir father, who was a tutor in Vicnna, was almost always gonc. Thcrc was virtually no contact with ncighbors, and visitors rarely camc to thcir housc. Evcn the occasional discoursc at homc may havc tended morc to mys-tify than darify thcir relations with the world. They had an old fornale vcrvant who could tell fascinating fairy tales and who also, likc

Mach. had grcat difficulty in rccognizing or understanding wali pictures as perspcctive representations of rcal threc-dimcnsional objeets.¹* When Johann Mach was home hc also compoundcd somc of young Ernst’s bcwildermcnt by amusing the childrcn with dcmonstrations of magie and by his own excellcnt storytelling. One conscqucnce of this was that when Ernst Mach had his own children hc forbadc them to be taught fairy tales.²⁰

He rcmcmbcrcd a first major step in his cscapc from noncomprc-hension in a windmill expcricncc:

If we cali to remcmbrancc our carly youth, we find that the conccption of causality was thcrc vcry clearly, but not the correct and fortunate applica-tion of it. In my own case, for cxample—I remember this exactly—thcrc was a turning point in my fifth ycar. Up to that timc I represemed to mysclf cvcrything I did not understand—a pianofortc, for instancc—as simply a motlcy asscmblagc of the most wonderful things, to which I ascribcd the sound of the notes. That the pressed kcy struck the chord with the hammer did not occur to mc. Then one day I saw a windmill.²¹

We [Ernst and his sister Octavia] had to bring a message to the millcr. Upon our arrival the mili had just begun to work. The terrible noise frightened mc, but did not hinder mc from watching the tceth of the shaft which meshed with the gcar of the grinding mcchanism and movcd on one tooth after another. This sight rcmained until I reached a morę maturę Icvcl, and in my opinion, raiscd my childlikc thinking from the level nf the wondcr-ł)clicving savagc to causal thinking; from now on, in order to understand the unintclligible, I no longcr imagincd magie things in the background but traccd in a broken toy the cord or lcvcr which had causcd the cffcct.²²

That Mach had dcvcloped a form of causal explanation was elear, but the particular kind has given the impression of having been within the contcxt of his “childhood phenomenalism.” For example, hc men-tioned the experience oncc again in a letter: . . an accident. the looking at a windmill from the inside, first taught me causal thinking, or morę exactly functional thinking.”²³ This qualification was critical. When the adult Ernst Mach approved of “causal explanation,” he meant constant rclations betwcen sensory appearances, relations that he believcd could best be cwpressed in terms of mathematical functions. When hc opposcd “causal explanation,” as he normally did, he meant appealing to transphenomenal “laws” or “entities," which in terms of his ontology simply did not exist.

Mach*s avcrsion to the notion of force was hoth ontological and cthical

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