Ernst Mach

1838–1916 · Austrian physicist

Topics: mathematics, learning

• Mathematical and physiological researches have shown that the space of experience is simply an actual case of many conceivable cases, about whose peculiar properties experience alone can instruct us.

  — Ernst Mach

• The aim of research is the discovery of the equations which subsist between the elements of phenomena.

  — Ernst Mach

• In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.

  — Ernst Mach

• There is no problem in all mathematics that cannot be solved by direct counting. But with the present implements of mathematics many operations can be performed in a few minutes which without mathematical methods would take a lifetime.

  — Ernst Mach