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tarły Philosophical Influence i

Mach uscd various mcans to help spread his philosophical idcas. He was an cxcellent lccturcr; hc wrote many articles, hc had a wide cor-respondcncc; and starting in 1886 he wrote a number of tcxtbooks for middle school and univcrsity science students. In this chapter I conccntratc on the influence of three of his best-known books on a few prominent scicntists and philosophers during the last quarter of the ninetccnth ccntury.

Mach's Conseruation oj Energy (1872) did not pass cntircly un-noticcd. Wilhelm Tobias in his Frontiers of Philosophy (1875) crit-icized Mach*s notion of mathcmatical multidimensionality from, strangely cnough, a phenomenalistie point of view.^ł Anton Lcclair, a Prague “Immanentist” philosopher and gymnasium tcachcr, in his The Realism of Modern Natural Science in Light of the Epistetno-logical Critiąue of Berkeley and Kant (1879), enthusiastically praiscd Mach’s book, cven calling it “revoIutionary.”² Ledair, known as an exccllent teacher, was a elose friend of Wilhelm Jerusalem. In his writ-ings Mach never mentioned Lcclair at all; but they both lived in Prague, they did correspond, and Mach had at least one of LeclaiPs books in his library.³ It is not impossible that Lcclair may cven havc influcnced Mach, espccially in the criticisms of Ne w ton's idcas in Mach’s Science of Mechanics. In any casc, immcdiatcly after the ap-pcarancc of Lcdair’s book Mach started to work on his Mechanics (i.c, in 1880).

Max Planck, whose doctoral dissertation was concerned with the

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Early Philosophical Influence

conscrvation of cncrgy (1879), prcsurmbly rcad Mach’s book on the same subjcct at that timc. Later, during the Mach-Planck confronta-tion (1909-1911), Mach questioncd Planck’s knowlcdge of it: "When M. Planck wrote 15 ycars after 1 did on the *conscrvation of cncrgy’ hc only brought one generał obscrvation against one of my dciailcd points, without which one would havc had to assumc that hc had not cvcn secn my book at all.” ⁴

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Mach’s Science oj Mechanics (1883) was immediatcly influential among scientists around the wcrld. Ostwald, Hertz, Boltzmann, and later Einstein all rcad it and wcrc decply influcnccd by it.

Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) was born in Riga, graduated from the Univcrsity of Dorpat, and taught chemistry in the Tcchnical Uni-versity of Riga from 1881 to 1887. His early scientific work led to the cofounding of a new science, physical chemistry. His long professor* ship at the Univcrsity of Lcipzig (1887-1906) allowed him to build up a large and highly successful laboratory in this new field which at-tractcd students from all over the world. Hc also wrote the first major treatisc and foundcd the first journal in physical chemistry.

Ostwald elaimed that Mach among the living, and Robert Meyer among the dead, wcrc the men who had influcnccd his thinking the most.⁰ He was espccially attractcd to Mach’s notions of cconomy, sub stance, and hypothesis. Mach defined “substance" as that which per sisted through all changcs and transforrnations and doubted that any referent could qualify. Ostwald was morę optimistic. But what rcality could possibly mect this standard ?

W. J. M. Rankinc first suggested the answer in his “OutlineN of the Science of Energet^s" in 1855. Mach’s friend Popper-Lynkeus was cvcn morę explicit in his "The Fundamentals of Electric Power Trans-mission” in 1883. Georg Heim (1851-1923) madę Popper’s finding the basis for his Theory of Energy (Lcipzig, 1887). But Hclm'$ clab-oration did not attract much attention until Ostwald incorporated the "factorization of cncrgy'' into the second edition of his own treatisc on physical chemistry, A Textbool{ of General Chemistry, in 1802. In short, both Heim and Ostwald adopted the opinion that the onlv "sub-stance" that persisted through all changcs and transforrnations was energy. Energy was the only genuinc rcality, the substratc of all ap

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