IMG74

Ernst Mach

attack: "If we want to cconomizc thinking the bcst way wotild bc to stop thinking at all.”^B0

ln spite ot Mach’s rccognition of having a “Buddhist conscicncc" and of sharing a Buddhist rcjcction of tlić “self" or "ego,” thcrc is no cvidcnce that he was awarc of how close somc uses of his theory of cconomy were to the Buddhist “cure” for human unhappiness. The drift in Mach’s thinking, howevcr, was unmistakable:

Not all problcms, which arisc in the coursc of the drvelopment of science, can bc solvcd; on the contrary, many will fali away bccausc one rccognizcs them as nuli [nichtig]. By the annihilation [ Vcrntchtung] of problcms, which rest upon an invertcd falsc manner of asking qucstions . . . science takes a fundamental step forward.⁵¹

If one is ablc to dcmonsirate the unsolvability or mcaninglessness of problcms which many generations havc tried to solve without succcss, tlien one has accomplishcd something which cannot he praised too highly.⁸²

Still less can I allow “motion” the right to creatc a world problem wherc nonę exists, and thereby to conccal the rcal point of attack in the investiga-tion of reality.⁸³

Everything that we can want to know is givcn by the solution of a problem in mathcm3iicai form, by the asccrtainmcnt of the functional depen-dcnce of the sensational elements on one another. This knowledgc cxhausts the knowledgc of ‘reality’.⁸⁴

Mach was savcd, evcn if illogically, by his Darwinian "biological needs" purpose of science and life, but how did his followcrs escapc from Buddhistic nihilism and its “finał solution" of the human achievc-ment problem? The answer was twofold: they did not fully escape (witness Lampa, W. Fred, and others), and whilc accepting Mach's "dcscribc-and-rclatc-thc-appcarances” approach as an end-purpose of science, they rejected it as a mcthodology in favor of the Boltzmann-Einstein emphasis on theories, imaginativc construction, and interest in ncw problcms. Boltzmann saw that carcful use of somc theories could “describe-and rclate thc-appearanccs” in a logically simpler and less arbitrary way than could somc dircct applications of “mathematical functions." Einstein rmphasized the occasional scicntific nccessity of spcculation. Even though he himsclf had a personality sympathetic to Buddhism, pacifism, and a kinematic rcjcction of force, Einstein insisted on the rcjcction of "Mach-Buddhist rcductionism” in favor of what he thought were those valucs most bcneficial to the continued dcvclopmcnt of science.

1 sec Mach 5 grcatness in his incorruptible skepticism and indepcndence; in my youngcr ycars, howevcr, Mach’s epistemologieal position also in-fluenccd mc very grc3tly, a position which today appcars to mc to bc cs-scntially untcnablc. For hc did not place in the correct lignt the esscntially constructivc and spcculativc naturę of thouglu and morc cspccially of scicntific thought; in conscquencc of which hc condcmned theory on pre-ciscly thosc points wherc its constructivc-$peculativc charactcr unconccabbly comcs to light, as for examplc in the kinctic atomie theory.⁶⁵

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