IMG19

Ernst Mach

ism" and spcculative idcalism. To bc suro, tbe.se movcments in oppo-siic directions all continucd to be prcscntationailist, and hence, within the cpistemological tradition of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, nonethe-Icss, this shift, cspecially with rcspcct to the importancc and valuc of science, is worth noting.

Mach s influence in Italy was real, but as in France, it was over-whelmcd by the philosophical rcaction against the idcas of Augustę Comtc and his followcrs and the “ovcrvaluing” of science and philos-l ophy of science. Machs Popular Scicnłtfic Lecturcs appeared in Italian in 1900, his Analysis of Sensations in 1903, and bis Science of Mcc han-ics in 1908, but the big news in Italian philosophy was Bencdctto Croce and the publication of his four-volumc work The Philosophy of fhc Spirit with the first volumc coming out in 1902. Mach’s books were never republished in Italy.

Bencdctto Croce (1866-1952) was bom in Pcscasscroli in Southern Italy. His parents were killcd in an cartbquakc when be was $cventccn. He tlien livcd with his patcrnal unclc in Romę where he also attended the University, but did not graduate. He went through a Marxist phase between 1896 and 1900, but his debt to Ilegel lastcd his entire lifc. As an independently wcalthy heir hc founded the pcriodical l^i Critica in 1903 in whose pages most of his idcas first appeared.

(Croce was as much an epistemological and ontological phenomenal-ist as Mach. Both men were atheists and rejected "mctaphysics." The prirnary difTercnces in their points of view were that Croce had a Iow opinion of “empirical” science and was morę interested in emotions, purposes, valucs, idcals, and espccially in bisiory. Croce emphasized what he called "becoming” and "spirit.” The former hc identified with both rcality and history, and the kuter, hc bclicvcd, was always pres* ent in becoming and first manifests itself as art. Croce is perhaps best known for his identification of philosophy with history. His major international influence has been on the fields of aesthctics and philosophy of history. Neithcr Croce nor Mach held anytbing resembling a comrnon sense understanding of causal cxplanation.

Mach’s only conspicuous influence on Croce’s philosophy was his theory of economy.

I Ic [Croce] adopted tlić socalled cconomic theory of science whieb had been originally developed by scicntists likc Mach and Poincare and which considcrs scientific conccpts to bc logical fictions produccd for practical convcnicncc. So according to Croce tłu- scicnccs of naturę dcal with fictions

.ind abstractions, whilc concrctc reality can only bc rcachcd through percep-tion of the indmdual fact, or historical knowldgc. Only history provides tis with truć knowlcdgc, and philosophy is its foundation. Croce was wcll awarc thnt the originators of the "cconomic theory" did not favor philo-sophic idcalism, but hc attachcd morc wcight to their idcas on the meihod of the Sciences than to their opinions on philosophy, in which he did not considcr them compctcnt.^7J

VI!

Ernst Mach had a major, if largcly indircct, inllucncc on iwcnticth* century English philosophy and in particular on Bertrand RusscU’s undcrsianding of physics and on one of the cpistemological stages rhrough which hc passed. Russell Liter reminiseed:

To sonie cxtcnt, they [ Russell'* doubts| were laid to rest by a book which greatly dclightcd mc: W. K. Clifford's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences?'⁶

1 studied Hcrtz’s Principia of Mec ha nieś, and I was dclightcd when Hertz succccdcd in manufacturing elcctro-magnctic wavcs.⁷‘

It is possihlc Russell ncvcr notieed the cxtcnt to which the abovc hooks were influcnccd by Mach’s undcrsianding of mass, forcc, and functional relations. Bertrand Russell entered Cambridge in 1890, bc-camc a fcllow at Trinity College in 1895, left in 1901, and returned 3S a leeturer from 1910 to 1916. Philosophically he passed through four major periods: Bradleyan Idcalism (1894-1898), Platonie "rcalism” (1898-1914), "Logical Atomism” (1918-1940?), and reprcscntative rcalism and mind-matler dualism (1940?-1969).

Bertrand RussclPs most important contrihution to philosophy h.»s normally been considered to hc his thrcc-volume Principia Mathemat ica (1910, 1912, 1914), which hc coauthored with Alfred Whitehead. But apart from his work on symholic logie, the logical atomism of his third period bas probahly drawn morc attention from the philosophic public than olher “periods” and aspeets of his thought. Bertrand Russell bccamc interested in the “ncutral monism” of William James bcforc World War I, hut whilc hc knew that Mach had dcvclopcd a simil.ir doctrinc, lic ncverthcless, was morc attracted hy the approach of James and American “New Rcalists” such as Ralph Barton Perry.⁷⁵ Mc also belicvcd that James had dcvclopcd his theory indepcndcntly of Mach.⁷®

At first, Russell opposed “naitral inonisui.’' Mc wrote: (1914):

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