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Ernst Mach

on thc side of fecling and will, man and bcast camc closer togcthcr llian on thc sidc of thc intellcct. Hut convcrscly, hc thought that ani-mals wcrc naturally of an cgoistical naturc and that thcy lackcd th_c capacity to form generał or altruistic goals. Mc qualificd his under-standing of animal intelligcncc, ho\vcvcr, by distinguishing betwccn “higher” and "lowcr” typcs and by stressing that we should not ovcr-estimate thc intelligcncc of thc “lowcr” typcs.

Perhaps the most basie difTcrcncc bctwcen thc bchaviorisdc ap-proachcs of Mach and Watson went bark to a philosophical disputc. Mach acccptcd the study of “introspcctivc” phenomena as Iegitimatc, and Watson, following the position of Augustę Comte, thc founder of Positivism, did not.^T0 For Watson, psychic data wcrc private and i_n-capablc of public vcrification, hcncc, could not be treated in a scicntific way. Machs “neutral monism" and climination of thc “sclf" or “ego” undcrcut thc problem, but in such a way as to repel thc lingering naivc rcalism of most so-called positivi$ts.^T1 In other words, tlicn as now. fcw “positivists" have nctually uscd their much-vauntcd “cmpiricism” in a manner as consistent and thoroughgoing as might approach Mach’s phenomenalism. On thc other hand, cvcn if Watson's bchavior-ism from a philosopical point of vicw must be considcrcd a mess, nonę thelcss, its practical and historical value with rcspcct to the devclop-ment of psychology as a science probably outweighed Machs morc consistent position with a good deal to spare.⁷“ The rcason was that Watson unintcntionally camc much closer to conimon sense than Mach.⁷³ Behavioristic “stimulus-rcsponse” explanation by secming to introduce mcchanistic understanding into psychology seemed much morę practical than Machs rciiancc on abstract mathcmatical func tions as “economic” dcscriptions of thc “appearances.”

Failure ro distinguish betwecn Comte-Watson “posilivisrn" and Mach’s cpistcmologically morę cohercnt brand has led to such un-fortunate contemporary statements as the following: “The mcthodology of thc science of animal bchavior is, in the now acceptcd technical sense, hchauionstic—i.e., it is foundcd on thc psychological positivism of Ernst Mach. It is conccrned with thc annotation and causal analysis of the ovcrt and rccordable bchavior of animals, not with their passions, hopcs, and fcars."⁷⁴

If the nuthor of thesc lines had substituted the namc “John Watson" for “Ernst Mach” hc would have comc closer to thc truth. To praise

, _ch is finc, but pcrhaps his rcal contnbutions to animal psycholog,

vcn if considerably morc modcst than thc paragraph abovc suggcsts', T ld bc cmphasizcd rathcr than a misunderstood vcrsion of his ⁵ hilosophy and an acaggeratcd conccption of its influence. Mach was P ‘ _fCStctl in animal behavior and hc was in many senses a ^Mpositivist," ⁱⁿ _{hc waS} not a followcr of Watson, and animal psychology is not

,^U i _on Mach’s “positivism." Nor did hc refuse consideration to thc "pissions, hopes. and fears" of anim^.»

M«ch’s Darwinian tcndcncy to think that ideas and other psychic henomena were suhject to “natural sclcctinn” and a kind of "sur-vival of thc fittest” hclpcd lead him to a form of tcleological cxplana-tion or justification by mcans of ostcnsiblc purposes. In particular, he •amc to thc opinion that if psychic phenomena satisfied no "biological need " then to that cxtent they wcrc "purposclcss” and cvcn “patho-• ical” In his ^{own worc}^^s:    marked and independent appcarance

Tphantasms without cxcitation of thc retina—drcams and thc half-waking State excepted—must by rcason of their biological purposc-lessness bc accountcd pathological.”⁷⁰ But what if a reader should go l,cvond Mach and supposc that all drcams and phantasms, whether pathological or not, might satisfy biological purposes? What might we c dl such a person ? Might we not cali him Sigmund Freud⁵ Frnst Mach and Josef Breucr successfully attacked some of the same roblcms conccrning thc humnn “labyrinth” and “scmi-circular canals" during thc 1B70S and knew cach other reasonably well.⁷⁷ During thc « _QS B_rcUcr published studics on aphasia and hysteria in collabora-!ion with Sigmund Freud. Morc than likcly Breucr interested Freud in <omc of Mach’s ideas. It is also probablc that Freud was indirectly in-flueneed by Mach through his rcading of Popper-Lynkeus’s book Phan-taśics of a Realist (1899).⁷⁸ Freud directly referred to Mach’s point of view in a letter to Wilhelm Fliess, dated Junc 12, 1900: “When I rcad

thc latcst psychological books (Mach’s Analyse der Empfindttngen----

etc.) all of which havc thc same kind of aims as my work, and sec what they have to say about drcams, I am as delighted as the dwarf in the fairy tale----”⁷⁰    .

What Freud ovcrlooked, howcvcr, was that the hrst edmon of Mach s Bonk came out in 1886, which was scveral years before Freud had de-vcloped his own ideas on drcams and hallucinations. We bek taciual evidence that Mach influeneed Freud in any way. sbape. or form. nor