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Mach’s Influence on Early Logical Positmsm and on Quantum Theory i

The end of World War 1 brought socialist governmcnts to power in Germany and Austria. They did not last long, but during their brief months of control several of Machs friends and followcrs acquircd a measurc of political influence or advanced in rank in their academic professions. Anton Lampa entered the Austrian Education Ministry where hc cncrgclTćally promoted adult education. Wolfgang Pauli, the elder, becamc a regular professor in Vicnna, and four other Mach allics were promoted from privatdozent to extraordinarius professor: Hugo Dingkrin Munich, Joseph Peteoldtat the Technical Univcrsity of Berlin, and Wilhelm Jerusalem and Heinrich Gomperz at the Uni-vcrsity of Vienna.

Machs influence also expandcd on the publishing front. Ali his major books reappeared in new German cditions, his Principia of Physical Optics, Vul. I, added to his reputation as an historian of science, and his anti-Planck and anti-Stumpf articlcs were published in book form for the first timc.

Thesc last iwo were reprinted on the rccommcndation of the hero of the hour, Friedrich Adler.¹ Almost simultancously with the dcath of Adlcr’s father, hc was rcleased from prison and shortly afterward hclped arouse Vienncse workers to opposc a communist putsch of the typc that had briefly succecdcd in neighboring Hungary and Bavaria at the timc (spring 1919). Adler then attempted to mediate betwcen tłic 2d and ^d Internationals (the so-callcd 2/₂ International), and

on his failurc pcrmancntly left for Ziirich lo bccorac generał seeretary of what remained of the soćialist Sccond International.²

His last contribuiion to Machist philosophy was his book Ernst Mach's Ooercoming of Mcchanistic Materialism, which had bccn put together from prcvious articles and was published in 1918 whilc he was still in orison.

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F. A. von Hayek has dcscribed Mach’s influence in Vicnna immcdiatcly after the war:

I studied in Vicnna cxactly thrcc years, 1918 to 1921, and as tar as philosophical discussion went it cssentially revolved around Mach's idcas. Vicnna cvcn at this timc was extraordinarily focuscd toward scientific philosophy. Outsidc of Heinrich Gomperz, whom we havc alrcady men- , tioncd, thcrc were Adolf Stohr, who thought along similar lines, and | Robert Reininger [a Kantian idcalist], who at least stood in a fricndly j relation to this orientation. . . .

For the young student interested in philosophy . . . who fclt a distaste for orthodox thought, Mach was the only alternative. ... I would also add that Ernst Mach’s role was great not only in the narrow realm of the natural Sciences, but cspccially in those fields wherc there were serious problems with rcspcct to the mcthodological or scientific character of their theories. . . .

Today, I can no longer remember why I turncd to Mach almost at once after returning from the field in 1918. My surviving list of elasses un-fortunatcly starts with 1919 and ineludes the rcmark: "and ne.\t Knowledgc and Error" which presupposes that I was alrcady familiar with other books hy F.rnst Mach. . . .

It is not casy to say why there was so much interest in Machs philosophy. Alrcady beforc the war the situation must have bccn quitc similar.³

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The major impact of Mach-s influence in Vienna during the 1920$, however, was not transmitted by Mach’s old followcrs, but by a ncw group whose first members largcly camc from Germany and who had cspccially strong interests in mathematics, physics, and symbolic logie.

Hans Hahn, a mathematicianeducator who had long bccn influeneed by Mach‘s idcas, began to teach at the University of Vienna in 1021.