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Ernst Mach

in favor of a differcnt conccption of that parallclism. From this timc on it was thc type of thc relational constancy and not of thc sensations rclatcd which dctcrmincd the parallclism for Mach.²- In practical tcrms, Machs first thcory of motion was Fcchncrian and his sccond, and rnorc succcssful one, mercly parallclistic in his latcr and morę nominał scnsc. His sccond thcory facilitatcd eloser attention to particular structural conncctions in thc human body.

Mach followcd up his cxpcrimcntal succcss with a number of closcly rclatcd vcnturcs. He sent an elcctric currcnt through his own labyrinth tofind soinciliing ncw, but found nothing shocking. He stunned fish to test their scnsc of cquilibrium and balancc. And he constructcd an in-genious windmill likc model to show how scmicircular canal liquid afTcctcd rcccptors and hclpcd causc thc fccling oł motion.

Mach put his rcsults together and published Outlincs of thc Thcory of thc Motor Sensations in 1875. This book terminated his rcscarch in this aren, cxcept for a brief addition in 1886. Joseph Brcucr, howcvcr, pursucd his inve$tigations into thc labyrindt and inner car cven further. Latcr, he hclpcd clarify otolith function and our sensc of cquilibrium.

Mach probably turr.cd away from further labyrinth investigations partly because his interests wcrc morc with sensations as sensations than with bodily structurc, and partly, bccausc he may havc anticipatcd that it was possiblc to study organ structure and function only so far in an informativc way withom having to rcly on vivisection.

The rcsults of Mach, Breuer, and Brown wcrc amended somewhat a few ycars latcr by thc discovery of J. R. Ewald that, after thc rcmoval of thc labyrinth from some animaJs, they gradually find ways to move about again and apparcntly cven fecl motion, prcsumably using sub-stitute organs.

In Iight of the importancc of thc work of Mach, Brcucr, and Brown in relating our fcclings of motion, unbalance, and dizziness with particular parts and actions of particular bodily organs, it is quitc re-markable that their investigations havc gonc, comparativcly speaking, so unrccognized, cspccially in light of thc nced for such Information in this thc Spacc Age with its problcms of gravity puli and wcightlcss-ness. But, in fact, thc obscurity of their discovcrics was of course ncver as complctc as their roles in making thc discovcries, nor was thc obscu-rity shortly after they madę thc discovcrics much less than now. The Brst Nobel Prize in thc field went to Robert Barany (1876-1936) in

19M, who had studicd in Vicnna and who prcsumably had lcorncd a good dcal from Brcucr, who was also thcrc.

II. HIS STAND IN NINETF.ENTH-CENTl.RY CONTROYERSIES Ilcring vs. Ilclmholtz

Johannes Muller (1801-1^58) is oftcn cónsidcrcd thc father of German physiology. His invcstigations hclpcd open up thc wholc field of sense physiology to scicntific cxamination and discovcry. Mach read his Handbook oj the Physiology of Man (1833-1840) and was impressed by many aspecis of it, particularly his *hativistic" thcory of spacc, a notion that fittcd in wcll with ontological pKcnomcndlsm.²³‘WtmshV’ psychological thcory of spacc hcld that spaccHike other sensations was immcdiately given in conscjousness/’ that is, spacc was not something inferred from sensory cjualitics or somehow interpolatcd from mcm-orics, past associations, or rcasoning.

Mach also acccptcd Muller’s thcory of specific ncrvc energies. This thcory was an attempt to rcplacc a partićularly crude interpretation of the rcprcsentativc thcory of perception, narady, thc vicw that physi-cal objeets transmitted images that wcrc received by the eyes and werc then literally transmitted in unaltercd form by thc optical nervcs into thc brain where the soul consciously noticed thc images. Miillers (1826) approach, which went back to Charles Bell and was by no means original, was that wc dircctly percciyed nervc gualities and that these ąualitics differed from nervc to nerve. Mach, together with EwaicTHering, hcld tcnaciouslyTtó this view. Evcn as late as 1896^!ach defended Miillcr’s opinion agninst what has now bccomc thc common view, namcly, that most nerves seem remarkably alikc in both struc-turc and function, and apparently dilTer primarily in quantity of mes-sage load carried.

Miiller's “theory of innervation,” that thc brain sent instamaneous messages to the muscles, likewisc attractcd Mach for a long time, per-haps it scemcd to support “mind-matter parallclism" ovct iulcraaion-ism. Mach, howevcr, began to changc his mind with the rcading of some of William Jamcss work (1880) and that of Hugo Munsterbcrg. (James was an "intcractionist.’’) Mach finally camc to think thaTMuT !er'$ "sensations of innervation” simply did not cxist.

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