KNOWLEDGE AND ERROR VIENNA CIRCLE COLLECTION Editorial Committee HENK L. MULDER, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University, Boston, Mass., U.S.A. BRIAN F. MCGUINNESS, The Queen's College, Oxford, England Editorial Advisory Board ALFRED J. AYER, New College, Oxford, England Y. BAR-HILLEL, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Israel ALBERT E. BLUMBERG, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A. HASKELL B. CURRY, Pennsylvania State Univ., Univ. Park, Pa., U.S.A. HERBERT FEIGL, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn., U.S.A. ERWIN N. HIEBERT, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Academy of Finland, Helsinki, Finland VIKTOR KRAFT, Vienna, Austria KARL MENGER, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Ill., U.S.A. GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden, Leyden, The Netherlands J. F. STAAL, University of California, Berkeley, Calif., U.S.A. VOLUME 3 EDITOR: BRIAN MCGUINNESS ERNST MACH ERNST MACH KNOWLEDGE AND ERROR Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry With an Introduction by ERWIN N. HIEBERT D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mach, Ernst, 1838-1916. Knowledge and error. (Vienna circle collection; v. 3) Translation of the 5th ed. of Erkenntnis und Irrturn. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Science-Philosophy. 3. Science-Methodology. 4. Thought and thinking. I. Title. II. Series. BDI63.M173 121 73-75641 ISBN-13: 978-90-277-0282-1 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1428-1 DOl: 10.1 007/978-94-010-1428-1 ERKENNTNIS UND IRRTUM First published by Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig, 1905 This translation from the 5th edition, 1926 Translationfrom the German by Thomas J. McCormack (Chapters xxi and xxii) and Paul Foulkes (all other material) Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc. Lincoln Building, 160 Old Derby Street, Hingham, Mass. 02043, U.S.A. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st Edition 1976 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner To the memory of DAVID HUME, RICHARD A VENARIUS and WILHELM SCHUPPE CONTENTS Introduction by Erwin N. Hiebert XI Author's Preface to the First Edition XXXI Author's Preface to the Second Edition xxxv Editor's Note to the English Edition XXXVII I. Philosophical and Scientific Thought II. A Psycho-physiological Consideration 15 III. Memory. Reproduction and Association 23 IV. Reflex, Instinct, Will, Ego 37 V. Development ofIndividuality in a Natural and Cultural Habitat 51 VI. The Exuberance of the Imagination 65 VII. Knowledge and Error 79 VIII. The Concept 92 IX. Sensation, Intuition, Phantasy 105 X. Adaptation of Thoughts to Facts and to Each Other 120 XI. On Thought Experiments 134 XII. Physical Experiment and its Leading Features 148 XIII. Similarity and Analogy as a Leading Feature of Enquiry 162 XIV. Hypothesis 171 XV. Problems 185 XVI. Presuppositions of Enquiry 203 X CONTENTS XVII. Pathways of Enquiry 212 XVIII. Deduction and Induction Psychologically Viewed 225 XIX. Number and Measure 238 XX. Physiological Space in Contrast with Metrical Space 251 XXI. On the Psychology and Natural Development of Geometry 264 XXII. Space and Geometry from the Point of View of Physical Enquiry 299 XXIII. Physiological Time in Contrast with Metrical Time 330 XXIV. Space and Time Physically Considered 339 XXV. Sense and Value of the Laws of Nature 351 Ernst Mach Bibliography (Compiled by O. BlUh and W. F. Merzkirch) 363 Bibliography of Works Cited by Ernst Mach in Knowledge and Error 376 Index of Names 388 ERNST MACH'S KNOWLEDGE AND ERROR Introduction by Erwin N. Hiebert The clearest and most comprehensive statement of Mach's mature scientific epistemology is given in the compilation of twenty-five essays that he published in 1905 under the title: Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung. These essays were drawn, as Mach tells us, from his winter semester lecture course delivered in 1895/6 in Vienna and entitled Psychologie und Logik der Forschung. Translated, at least in part, into French (1908), Russian (1909) and Turkish (1935), it seems puzzling, to say the least, to see that the crowning work of Mach's philosophical deliberations - Knowledge and Error - should have waited seventy years to appear in English.! This delay is all the more surprising in view of the attention given to Mach's works by English scholars since at least the 1890's. The incentive for Mach's wide and sustained readership in the English-speaking world is, of course, closely related to the efforts of Paul Carus, editor of the Open Court Publ. Co. of LaSalle, Illinois. Mach's Die Principien der physikalischen Optik was dedicated to Carus posthumously in 1921. By 1926 all of Mach's important monographs had been brought out in English by Open Court with the exception of Wiirmelehre and Erkenntnis und Irrtum. The first American edition of Mach's Mechanics, for example, was published in 1890, and the sixth, with a new introduction, in 1960. With the publication of the present volume, and the Wiirmelehre (now in process of being translated), all of Mach's major treatises, finally, will be available in English. It may not be inappropriate to mention that this would have pleased Mach enormously. He was an outspoken Anglophile and attached himself to the empirical tradition of Berkeley, Hume and Mill. He cham­ pioned the approach to physics of Faraday and Maxwell. Among the staunchest of allies for his epistemological views, Mach included econo­ mist-logician W. S. Jevons, the mathematician-physicist-philosophers W. K. Clifford, P. E. B. Jourdain, and Karl Pearson. To Pearson he dedicated the third edition of Die Analyse der Empfindungen (1902). On the Continent Mach's favorite philosopher-scientists were Kirchhoff, Helmholtz, Hertz, Duhem and Poincare. XII INTRODUCTION Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung. Von E. MACH Emer. Professor an der Unlversltlt Wlen. LEIPZIG Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth 1905. INTRODUCTION XIII On a number of occasions Mach expressed the sentiment, especially in his correspondence, that America was the land of intellectual freedom and opportunity, the coming frontier for a new radical empiricism that would help to wash metaphysics out of philosophy. In 1901 he sponsored the German edition of Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881) by J. B. Stallo, Cincinnati lawyer and philosopher.2 Mach warmly endorsed Stallo's book because his scientific aims so closely approximated his own, and because Stallo rejected the latent metaphysical elements and concealed ontological assumptions of the mechanical-atomistic inter­ pretation of the world. The second edition of Wiirmelehre was dedicated to Stallo in 1900. The fourth edition of Populiir-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen (1910), containing seven new essays, was dedicated to Harvard Professor of physiology, philosophY, and psychology, William James. Mach had a strong intellectual affinity for James' pragmatism because, like himself, he recognized that James had come to radically empirical views from science. Both men took pure pre-conceptualized experience, from which the mental and physical predicates of experience are composed, to be neutral rather than real, unreal, objective or subjective. Mach was so taken with James that he thanked him for giving him his first understanding of Hegel. James was so impressed with his visit with Mach in Prague in 1882 that he wrote his wife: As for Prague, veni, vidi, vici. I went there with much trepidation to do my social­ scientific duty .... I heard Hering give a very poor physiology lecture, and Mach a beautiful physical one ...• Mach came to my hotel and I spent four hours walking and supping with him at his club, an unforgettable conversation. I don't think anyone ever gave me so strong an impression of pure intellectual genius. He apparently has read everything and thought about everything, and has an absolute simplicity of manner and winningness of smile ... 8 In a letter to Carl Stumpf at the same time, James wrote: [In Berlin] Helmholtz ... gave me the very worst lecture I ever heard in my life except one (that one was by our most distinguished American mathematician). The lecture I heard in Prague from Mach was on the same elementary subject as Helmholtz's, and one of the most artistic lectures I ever heard .... Oberhaupr I must say that the hospi­ tality of Prague towards wandering philosophers much surpasses that of Berlin and Leipzig.4 Stumpf thought Mach's "positivistic theory of knowledge ... impossible and unfruitful".5 XIV INTRODUCTION BibliotheqLle de PiJilosopiJie scientifique ERNST MACH "nU.·E~:::''':t:r. .\ L'LJNI\,KIISITi: Ot: Vn;NNE LA Connaissance et l'Erreur 'l'RADUl'f StiR LA DERNIERE f.:DI'l'ION ALLEUANDE PAR ]e D" MARCEL DUFOUR l'non;sSEun ACnEGK ~ I..\ F.\r.lU'; II .. M ....c .. F. DE NANCt PARIS ERNEST FLAMMARION, EDITEUR 26, RUg RACINE, 26 190H IJroils de lJa,juclion et de repl'oduclion reserves pour lous 1•• pay~. y cOrllflli. Ia Suede et 1m Norvbge. INTRODUCTION xv The circumstances that led to Mach's Knowledge and Error are signifi­ cant for an understanding of the dual historical and philosophical focus and implications of the work. Its completion, as a synthesis of epistemolo­ gical and methodological inquiries, was coupled with Mach's decision to begin a new chapter in his professional career when the opportunity presented itself. In 1895 Mach was invited to accept the third chair in philosophy at the University of Vienna.