Book contents
- Interpreting Mach
- Interpreting Mach
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Ernst Mach’s Piano and the Making of a Psychophysical Imaginarium
- 2 Mother’s Milk and More
- 3 Meaningful Work
- 4 Mach on Analogy in Science
- 5 Ernst Mach’s Enlightenment Pragmatism
- 6 On the Philosophical and Scientific Relationship between Ernst Mach and William James
- 7 Ernst Mach and Friedrich Nietzsche
- 8 Abstraction, Pragmatism, and History in Mach’s Economy of Science
- 9 Holding the Hand of History
- 10 Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle
- 11 Narratives Divided
- 12 Phenomenalism, or Neutral Monism, in Mach’s Analysis of Sensations?
- 13 The Case for Mach’s Neutral Monism
- Index
- References
1 - Ernst Mach’s Piano and the Making of a Psychophysical Imaginarium
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2021
Edited by
Book contents
- Interpreting Mach
- Interpreting Mach
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Ernst Mach’s Piano and the Making of a Psychophysical Imaginarium
- 2 Mother’s Milk and More
- 3 Meaningful Work
- 4 Mach on Analogy in Science
- 5 Ernst Mach’s Enlightenment Pragmatism
- 6 On the Philosophical and Scientific Relationship between Ernst Mach and William James
- 7 Ernst Mach and Friedrich Nietzsche
- 8 Abstraction, Pragmatism, and History in Mach’s Economy of Science
- 9 Holding the Hand of History
- 10 Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle
- 11 Narratives Divided
- 12 Phenomenalism, or Neutral Monism, in Mach’s Analysis of Sensations?
- 13 The Case for Mach’s Neutral Monism
- Index
- References
Summary
Psychophysics as Mach understood it could be explained in several ways. This reflects the central conundrum that psychophysics held the potential to resolve: the communication of an individual’s subjective experience. This chapter surveys the many ways in which Mach described psychophysical experiences, from demonstrations on his Bösendorfer grand piano to differential equations. These descriptions were often multi-modal, using sound and images in tandem. Mach also employed analogies, mathematical derivations, and descriptions of the subjective experience of such phenomena as accommodation, acceleration, and visual after-images. A comparison of how Mach discusses psychophysics in popular lectures, scientific publications, and personal correspondence suggests that he made a number of assumptions about how best to communicate scientific ideas to different audiences. Further, this chapter argues that Mach’s techniques of presentation/argumentation, celebrated both in his time and subsequently, went far towards cultivating a psychophysical imaginarium similar to a mind’s eye. That is, by asking his readers or listeners to imagine specific psychophysical experiences, Mach established the broad outlines of a new way of thinking about subjectivity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Interpreting MachCritical Essays, pp. 10 - 27Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
References
Bohlman, Philip 2000. ‘Composing the Cantorate: Westernizing Europe’s Other Within’, in Born, Georgina and Hesmondhalgh, David (eds.), Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. University of California Press, pp. 187–212.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine (ed.) 2000. Biographies of Scientific Objects. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fechner, Gustav T. 1851. Zend-Avesta oder über die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits. Vom Standpunkt der Naturbetrachtung. Leopold Voß.Google Scholar
Grey, Thomas 2002. ‘Masters and Their Critics: Wagner, Hanslick, Beckmesser, and Die Meistersinger’, in Vazsonyi, Nicholas (ed.), Wagner’s Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation. University of Rochester Press, pp. 165–189.Google Scholar
Grey, Thomas (ed.) 2008. The Cambridge Companion to Wagner. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grey, Thomas (ed.) 2009. Richard Wagner and His World. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heidelberger, Michael 2004. Nature from Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and His Psychophysical Worldview. Translated by Klohr, Cynthia. University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Born, Georgina and Hesmondhalgh, David (eds.), Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Christoph 2003. ‘The Pocket Schedule’, in Holmes, Frederic, Renn, Jürgen, and Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg (eds.), Reworking the Bench: Research Notebooks in the History of Science. Springer, pp. 183–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Frederic and Olesko, Kathryn 1995. ‘The Images of Precision: Helmholtz and the Graphical Method in Physiology’, in Wise, M. Norton (ed.), The Values of Precision. Princeton University Press, pp. 198–221.Google Scholar
Hui, Alexandra 2013. ‘Changeable Ears: Ernst Mach’s and Max Planck Studies of Accommodation in Hearing’, Osiris 28: 119–145.Google Scholar
Hui, Alexandra 2014. ‘Origin Stories of Listening, Melody, and Survival at the End of the Nineteenth Century’, in Kennaway, James (ed.), Music and the Nerves, 1700–1900. Palgrave, pp. 170–190.Google Scholar
Kessel, Johann 1874. ‘Ueber den Einfluss der Binnenmuskeln der Paukenhöhle auf die Bewegung und Schwingungen des Trommelfels am todten Ohre’, Archiv for Ohrenheilkunde 2: 80–92.Google Scholar
Kulke, Eduard 1884. Über die Umbildung der Melodie: Ein Beitrag zur Entwickelungslehre. J. G. Calve’sche K. K. Hof- und Univ.-Buchhandlung.Google Scholar
Kulke, Eduard 1906. Kritik der Philosophie des Schönen. Deutsche Verlagactiengesellschaft.Google Scholar
Kursell, Julia 2018. Epistemologie des Hörens: Helmholtz’ physiologische Grundlegung der Musiktheorie. Wilhelm Fink Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1861. ‘Ueber die Kontroverse Zwischen Doppler und Petzval, bezüglich der Aenderung des Tones und der Farbe durch Bewegung’, Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik 6: 120–126.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1864a/1896. ‘Über die Cortischen Fasern des Ohres’, reprinted in Mach, Populär-Wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen. J. A. Barth, pp. 17–31.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1864b/1896. ‘Die Erklärung der Harmonie’, reprinted in Mach, Populär-Wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen. J. A. Barth, pp. 32–47.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1865. ‘Bemerkungen über die Accommodation des Ohres’, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 51: 343–346.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1866. Einleitung in die Helmholtz’sche Musiktheorie: Populär für Musiker dargestellt. Leuschner & Lubensky.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1871a/1896. ‘Die Symmetrie’, reprinted in Mach, Populär-Wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen, J. A. Barth, pp. 101–118.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1872a. Letter to Eduard Kulke. 30 May, letter no. 4. Ernst Mach Papers, Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution Special Collections, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1872b. ‘Über die stroboskopische Bestimmung der Tonhöhe’, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 66: 67–74.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1891. ‘Some Questions of Psycho-Physics. Sensations and the Elements of Reality’, The Monist 1: 393–400.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1896. Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre historische-kritisch entwickelt. J. A. Barth.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst 1906. ‘Eduard Kulke’, in Kulke, Eduard, Kritik der Philosophie des Schönen. Deutsche Verlagactiengesellschaft, pp. x–xiii.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst and Kessel, Johann 1872. ‘Versuche über die Accommodation des Ohres’, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 66: 337–43.Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst and Kessel, Johann 1874. ‘Beiträge zur Topographie und Mechanik des Mittelohres’, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 69: 221–43.Google Scholar
Radano, Ronald, Bohlman, Philip, and Baker, Houston (eds.) 2000. Music and the Racial Imagination. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg and Fruton, Joseph 1997. Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Ernst Heinrich 1834. De Pulsu, Resorptione, Auditu, et Tactu. Prostate Apud C. F. Kohler.Google Scholar
Weber, Ernst Heinrich 1846. ‘Der Tastsinn und Gemeingefühl’, in Wagner, R. (ed.), Handwörterbuch der Physiologie, 3. Vieweg, pp. 481–588.Google Scholar
- 3
- Cited by