The Routledge Handbook of the History of Philosophy of Science After Kant by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2025-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Mach’s principle continued

Ernst Mach’s Analysis of Sensations (1886) had a significant influence on Christian von Ehrenfels, who published “Über Gestaltqualitäten” (Gestalt-quality) (1890), and his investigation of the perception of complexes. Mach and Ehrenfels are considered the pioneers of Gestalt psychology and the famous “Berlin School” around Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka and Kurt Lewin (Stadler 2015: xvi-xvii).

Paul Feyerabend, for instance, is another well-known example of those affected by such a wide range. Feyerabend was actively involved in the so-called “Kraft Circle”, a discussion group that emerged in Vienna after World War II, in the tradition of the Vienna Circle around Viktor Kraft (see Chapter 23). In the 1980s, after his famous 282book Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge appeared in 1975, Feyerabend began to study Mach’s writings again. In his essay “Mach’s Theory of Research and Its Relation to Einstein” 1984, he praised Mach’s heuristic and historical approach to the research method and thus advocated a historical-critical research theory (“historical-pragmatic turn”) (Stadler 2006: ix-xxxviiii; Feyerabend 1984). Feyerabend highlighted Mach’s historical-critical research methodology to favor the pragmatic-historical against the abstract-theoretical tradition in the history of science. Thus, Feyerabend called for a rediscovery of Mach as a pioneer of the “historical tradition” with a pragmatical orientation in the philosophy of science (Stadler 2014: 751–56). Feyerabend wrote:

Mach’s critique was part of a general reform of science in the sense that it linked criticism with new results. However, the positivists and their relentless opponents, the “critical rationalists” proceeded from some petrified components of science, which are no longer accessible to research, and reinforced them with the help of philosophical arguments […]. Mach’s critique was dialectic and productive, the philosophers’ critique was dogmatic and without results.

(Feyerabend 1980, quoted from Stadler 2010: 180)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.