IMG82

Ernst Mach

IX

Josiah Roycc was familiar with Machs Mechanics and thcory of ccon-omy aTearly"as 1892, and Charles Pcirce wrotc a savagc rcvicw of that same book in the following year, but when one begins to Tpeak of Mach’s influence on American philosophy, the proper place to start is, of course, with William James himself, probably Amcricas most colorful thinker, and with John Dewey, her best known and most influcntial.³⁰ William James (1842-1910), son of an idcalistic philoso-pher and Swedenborgian mystic, and brother of a cosmopolitan novel-ist almost as famous as himself, madę significant contribuiions, likc Mach, to both psychology and philosophy. James, the psychologist, was one of the fcw Americans cvcr to read Mach's psychological and phys-iological articlcs of the early i86os. A rcason for this was that James, likc Mach and Wundt, had bccn attracted to Fechners “psycho-physics” and attempts to mcasurc huinan sensation tirnes in an exact and scicntific way. James in his wcll-known Principles of Psychology (1890) madę cxtensive use of Machs expcrimcntal data, both agrceing and disagrecing with particular rcsults.

The William James we want to comparc with Frnst Mach, howcver, was not the tcchnical psychologist, nor the long-timc Harvard profes-sor with his many responsibilities, but the enthusiastie champion of cxpcricncc, change, and pragmatism, a man to whom all categorics and stability were repugnant.

James eagerly awaited the publication of Mach’s 1886 Contribuiions to the Analysis of Sensations. He wrote to Carl Stumpf: “His [Mach’s] book . . . is about to appear. I am thirsty to read it. . .    ³⁷ Jamcs’s

public opinion of it, howcvcr, was dclaycd until it appeared in English in 1897 when hc was quoted as saying: “A wondcrfully original littlc book. Likc cverything he writes a work of genius.” ³⁸ It sccms very possible that Mach’s phenomenalism and theory of “biological needs" cncouragcd James to deve!op his thcory of expcricncc and, with Pcirce hclped lead him to his notorious spccial philosophy, Pragmatism. According to R. B. Perry:

Thcrc were thrcc German philosophers of his timc to whom James was cspccially indebted, G. T. Fechner, Hermann Lotze, and Ernst Mach.³⁰

James rcckoned arnong his allics the cx|>crimcntal scientists who oflcrcd a pragmatic interpretation of their own tcchniquc~ Among these he fre-quenfly named Ernsr Mach, Karl Pcarson, Wilhelm Ostwald, and Henri

Poincare. From Mach James had learned soincthing of what he knew afioiit the history of science, and he had readily acceptcd his view of the biological and economic function of scicntific conccpts.⁴⁰

James acceptcd Mach’s vicw of functional relations in science: “The clcarncss and elcgance of your way of writing, the suhtlcty of your thought and abovc all the truth (as 1 firmly bclicvc) of your generał conception of the relation of our formulas to facts, put you into an cntircly uniquc position among writers on the philosophy of sci-

n 41

ence.

James shared with Mach the belief that consciousness was mcrcly a relation and the “nativistic” vicw that physiological spacc was im-mcdiatcly given in consciousness.⁴² James cxprcsscd his particular form of phenomenalism as follows: “Everything real must be cxpcrienccable somcwherc and cvcry kind of thing cxpcricnccd must somcwhcrc be real.”⁴³ Both men, together with Bertrand Russell, accepted^neutral monism," the belief that ontological phenomenalism was as distant fTom idealism as it was from materialism or rcpresentational realism.

In short, in order to make their point of vicw morc acccptablc to peo-plc who might havc a prejudice against the labcl “idealism,” they de* libcratcly played down the elose historical and logical relation of their philosophy to Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, thinkers normally consid-ered to be in the idcalistic tradition in philosophy.

Jamess phenomenalism, howcvcr, ovcrflowed in all dircctions well beyond what lic might havc learned from Mach. Contrary to Marli, James held: first, sensations could be doubted; second, cxperience was in no way limited to “elements” or what could be scientif-ically tested; third, moods, values, interests, and mental cxperiencc were different in quality from physical cxperiencc and internet with physical expericnce (i.c., no psychophysical parallelism); and fourth. to understand changc (rather rhan mcrc scicntific constant relations) was to understand rcality,

Mach’s thcory of “biological needs” was compatible with James's Pragmatism, and, as we havc already mentioned, probably hclped devclop it, but again, as with phenomenalism, James c.\ploded his views so far beyond Mach, that evcntually the resemblance scemcd fecblc to the point of virtual disappcarancc. In spite of the fact that Mach justified scientific invcstigation and his philosophy of science in terms of how wcll they satisfied human “biological needs.” in practice, he tended to ignore this ultimatc goal almost cntircly and conccntratcd on the “intcrnal" goal of science, to describc the appearanccs in the

»27