Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry

ISBN-13: 9789027702821 / Angielski / Miękka / 1975 / 394 str.

Ernst Mach; B. F. McGuinness

Opis

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) 2 by J. B. Stallo, Cincinnati lawyer and philosopher. 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.

Spis treści

I. Philosophical and Scientific Thought.- II. A Psycho-physiological Consideration.- III. Memory. Reproduction and Association.- IV. Reflex, Instinct, Will, Ego.- V. Development of Individuality in a Natural and Cultural Habitat.- VI. The Exuberance of the Imagination.- VII. Knowledge and Error.- VIII. The Concept.- IX. Sensation, Intuition, Phantasy.- X. Adaptation of Thoughts to Facts and to Each Other.- XI. On Thought Experiments.- XII. Physical Experiment and its Leading Features.- XIII. Similarity and Analogy as a Leading Feature of Enquiry.- XIV. Hypothesis.- XV. Problems.- XVI. Presuppositions of Enquiry.- XVII. Pathways of Enquiry.- XVIII. Deduction and Induction Psychologically Viewed.- XIX. Number and Measure.- XX. Physiological Space in Contrast with Metrical Space.- XXI. On the Psychology and Natural Development of Geometry.- XXII. Space and Geometry from the Point of View of Physical Enquiry.- XXIII. Physiological Time in Contrast with Metrical Time.- XXIV. Space and Time Physically Considered.- XXV. Sense and Value of the Laws of Nature.- Index of Names.

O autorze

Ernst Mach (1838-1916) war Physiker, Philosoph und Wissenschaftstheoretiker. Er ist heute vor allem durch die nach ihm benannte Mach-Zahl, die das Vielfache der Geschwindigkeit relativ zur Schallgeschwindigkeit beschreibt, bekannt. Neben der Physik beschäftigte er sich intensiv mit der Philosophie. Er gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Vertreter und als Mitbegründer des Empiriokritizismus. Im Bereich der Psychologie hat er sich als Wegbereiter der Gestaltpsychologie bzw. Gestalttheorie einen Namen gemacht.