The Inºuence of Biology and Psychology upon Physics: Ernst Mach Revisited

Adaptationist accounts of our physiology and psychology form the basis of Machian physics. The newly matured sciences of physiology, psychology, and evolutionary theory suggested that space, time and matter are psychological phenomena as well as physical ones. Mach’s critique of Newtonian space and time which inspired Einstein arose out of this tradition, and thus, in a lim-ited yet important sense, bio-psychology inºuenced the course of twentieth cen-tury physics. The frequent excursions which I have made into this province have all sprung from the profound conviction that the foundations of sci-ence as a whole, and of physics in particular, await their next great-est elucidations from the side of biology, and especially, from the analysis of the sensations. (Mach 1890, Preface to 1st Ed.) Science stands thus in the midst of the natural process of evolution, and she can guide evolution in the proper direction and help it along, but never replace it. (Mach [1896] 1986, p. 354–355) A broad foundation is laid for the theory in question, and light is shed upon it from new sides, if, in conformity with the stimulus given by Dar-winism, we conceive of all psychical life—including science—as biologi-cal appearance, and if we apply to the theory the Darwinian conceptions of struggle for existence, of development, and of selection. (Mach 1890, p. 49)