Ernst. 马赫（1838〜1916）奥地利-捷克哲学家、物理学家、心理学家。 The Mach number and the Mach band effect get their name. His main works include "Analysis of Sensation" and "Historical Review of Mechanics".
Mach's ideas played a role in Einstein's creation of the general theory of relativity. General relativity is a radical overhaul of the basic ideas of classical mechanics. 马赫强调科学定律则是观察的概括总结，而不是一种先入为主的真理。 He disagreed with the concepts of absolute space and absolute time contained in Newtonian mechanics. Einstein's theory of relativity proves his point.
Mach created the philosophy of science that was influential in the twentieth century, believing that the laws of science were an overview of the facts obtained by experiments, and created it to make it easier to understand complex data. Therefore, the connection between scientific laws and reality is not as dense as the connection of thinking. Einstein hailed him as a pioneer of the theory of relativity.
First, the second generation of positivist disciples
Machism stems from the British tradition of empiricism and positivism. This can be seen from the fact that Machism is called empirical criticism. 马赫早年也是从康德哲学那里起家的，后来转向贝克莱，最后达到休谟。 If Comte is the first generation of positivism and Wigentstein logical positivists are the third generation of positivism, then Mach can be regarded as the second generation of positivism.
The problem of the origin of the world is an ontological problem, while Mach is more concerned with the epistemological problem, he believes that sensory experience is the source of scientific knowledge, and all knowledge can be reduced to scientific knowledge, otherwise it is meaningless, and the inquiry of the origin of the world is such a problem. Science, on the other hand, is nothing more than a record and generalization of feelings.
The problem of causality that has plagued philosophers for many years, Mach replaced it with a functional relationship, for two variables, it can only be said who is whose function, and it is a metaphysical practice to find causal relationships between them, and the law of causality is derived from animism and is a superstition. Transcendental mathematics and causality in Kant's philosophy are reduced to symbols for recording sensations in Machism and analytic philosophy.
Mach said that the law of cause and effect has long ago attempted to replace the concept of cause with the concept of mathematical functions, that is, the concept of cause with the interdependence of phenomena, strictly speaking, with the interdependence of phenomenal characteristics.
Unlike Kant's attempt to find something that precedes experience, Mach sought to dissolve all traditional metaphysical problems and reduce them to empirical science problems, that is, to firmly reject metaphysics. This rejection is not to think that traditional metaphysics is wrong, but to abolish metaphysical issues as meaningless.
认为马赫是唯物主义者或者唯心主义者都是不符合他的本意的，因为唯物也好，唯心也罢，都是建立在回答世界本原问题的基础之上的，马赫拒绝回答这个问题，他认为这个问题是传统形而上学问题，回答是没有意义的。 Material or spiritual is nothing more than the product of our habits, not so much what is behind the feeling, but rather a symbol that records the elements of the feeling.
Which way should we take in the description of experience? Mach believes that the simplest and most effortless way should be adopted, that is, the economic principle of thinking. 比如在描述日地关系时，日常语言中，我们经常说，太阳从东方升起，这是采用地心说的一种描述方式，而在天文观测中，我们则通常采用日心说的描述方式。 Why this difference, because of convenience. In daily life, geocentrism is a more economical way of thinking, while heliocentrism in astronomical observations is more economical, and there is no right or wrong, because the frame of reference of motion is relative.
Mach's followers in Austria formed the Vienna Group in Vienna, where they combined Mach's philosophy with Wittgenstein's philosophy of language to create the school of logical positivism. Most of the members of the Vienna group were either of Jewish descent or whose wives were Jewish, socialists or social democrats. After Hitler came to power, most of them fled to the United States, making analytic philosophy the mainstream philosophy in English-speaking countries, and its influence was far-reaching. A modern philosopher can disagree with this trend, but he cannot ignore it entirely.
Machism, analytic philosophy of language and phenomenology, and Western Marxism developed in two directions of German classical philosophy, the former in the direction of philosophy of scientific language and empiricism, and the latter in the direction of philosophy of value and irrationalism. Figuratively speaking, like the Rhine and Danube, they flow in two opposite directions.
Second, the natural science empirical bull Mach
Mach claimed that he was only a natural scientist, not a philosopher, and did not attempt to establish an all-encompassing philosophical system, but only to explore the epistemology of the natural sciences and find appropriate ways to solve the specific problems of the natural sciences. It was with this goal in mind that Mach sought to go beyond the traditional philosophical framework of metaphysics, including materialism and idealism, to establish an epistemology and methodology that unifies the various natural sciences and finds a common basis for the different sciences. This is exactly the philosophical theory advocated by many positivists, which in Mach took the form of world elementalism or elemental monism.
The economic principle of thinking is the fundamental principle of Machist epistemology. He believed that philosophy was thinking about the world according to the principle of least effort. His whole empirical criticism is a practical application of this principle. It is according to this principle that he cleanses the objective material world, objective necessity, causality, etc. from experience, leaving only so-called pure experience that has not been tainted by them. The economic principle of thinking is simply to achieve as much effect as possible with as little thought as possible. This is just as a shrewd businessman makes as much profit as possible with as little capital as possible, with as little labor as possible, and with the least amount of time. In Maher's view, the role of science and human understanding is to model and predict empirical facts in order to replace experience and save experience. The more a scientific theory can replace more empirical facts, the simpler and more economical it is, the more conducive it is to adapt people to the environment, and thus the more it conforms to the economic principles of biology, that is, the economic principles of thinking. In other words, the simplicity and economy of thinking in modeling and predicting the actual simplicity and economy of experience, the main criterion for evaluating scientific and cognitive activities, is also the main content of the economic principle of thinking.
Mach's theory of world elements reduces the world reached by science and human understanding to a composite of elements, and the elements are feelings, so the world is transferred by human feelings. Human feelings are relative, for the same object, different people and even the same person will have different feelings in different situations; 世界上的事物的存在也是相对的，在这样的一个世界中，不可能存在不以人的感觉为转移的客观必然性； The causal connection between things can only be relative, without objective and necessary meaning. 科学和人类的认识的任务不是去发现客观必然性和因果性，而是按照思维经济的原则对感觉经验范围的事实及它们之间的相互联系来加以描述，也就是把传统哲学和科学所论及的因果联系等自然事物的联系当做感觉要素的依存关系来描述。
Mach believed that the cosmic world is composed of a neutral element, and both material and spiritual things are a composite of such elements. The so-called neutral elements are color, sound, pressure, space, time, which are the things we usually call feelings. 在他看起来，物质、运动、规律都不是客观存在的东西，而是人们生活中有用的假设； The law of cause and effect is a product of people's psychology and should be replaced by a functional relationship. The world can thus be represented as a functional relationship between elements, which science can only describe but cannot explain, and the description should follow the economic principle of thinking, that is, to make the most perfect statement of empirical facts with the least amount of thought.
The bucket experiment was an experiment documented by Newton in his magnum opus, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. According to the experiment, the water surface is only flat when the bucket is relatively stationary, and it is curved at other times, which shows that the tendency of water to move does not depend on the relative motion of water relative to surrounding things, but depends on an absolute reference frame, that is, the absolute space that Newton said. 牛顿就是依照绝对空间的概念推导出整个经典力学，从一个日常现象建立起整个物理学大厦，慨叹牛顿的鬼斧神工之余，一直到二百年后才有人对此异议，这个人不是爱因斯坦，而是恩斯特. Mach.
Third, the gravedigger of Newton's classical mechanics
Mach, born to kill embryos, a lifetime of meeting God to kill God, meeting Buddha and killing Buddha, even Lord Niu also has to open the coffin board and pull out the whip corpse, involved in a wide range, whether physics, physiology and psychology are quite successful, the expression of the famous Newton's second law is proposed by him, and now the unit Mach that represents the speed of the aircraft is also named in honor of him, after all, he is the pioneer of ultrasound, in general, the speed of the aircraft is supersonic, The chiaroscuro game that everyone often plays now comes from his proposal of the Mach belt effect, and even the philosopher who was criticized by Lenin.
Mach's criticism of the bucket experiment comes from the assumption of absolute space, Mach is a master of positivism, and anything that cannot be proved experimentally does not exist for him.
Mach proposed his own explanation for the bucket experiment, if the water in the bucket does not rotate relative to the entire starry sky background, the water surface is flat. When the water rotates relative to the starry sky background, the surface of the water is concave. In Mach's explanation, absolute space is not needed. On the surface, Mach seems to have simply replaced Newton's absolute space with the entire starry sky background. But the two are very different, and Mach's explanation is completely testable, everyone can see the starry sky background, but not absolute space.
So how is Mach's view tested? The practical result of Mach's view is gyroscopes. Once a gyroscopic axis without outside interference is pointed in a certain direction of the starry sky, it always stays in that direction. Of course, the gyroscope that is not subject to external interference does not exist, but if the required accuracy is not too high, such as sailing on the sea in the dark night, only consider the influence of the earth, and the earth is very small, the rotation is slow, so the error caused by it is extremely small, and even if the difference of one thousandth of a degree above the sea is not a big problem, so before the advent of satellite navigation systems, navigators relied on gyroscopes to guide the direction.
当然到了航空领域就有些问题了，因为星空的影响就有些大了，而且航空的要求精度极高，但是近地空间的飞机和卫星，仍可以用陀螺仪导航，可要是我们的征途是星辰大海，陀螺仪就有些不太适用了，那就必须要考虑相对论效应，所以现在的卫星导航系统都考虑了相对论效应。
Fourth, Einstein's guide
And at this time, if you use absolute space to consider the pointing problem of the gyroscope, it is somewhat inexplicable, that is, to introduce ether.
And in Mach's view, the ether has already been eliminated. Mach's idea is further extended to the idea that each inertial frame is equal relative to the observer and there is no absolute static frame, is this view somewhat familiar? This is the theory of relativity.
Einstein spoke highly of Mach's work, acknowledging its great role in the development of the theory of relativity, and calling himself a pious student of Mach.
But Einstein's hot face rubbed Mach's cold ass, because Mach did not recognize the theory of relativity at all.
In the era when Newton was dead and Einstein was not born, Mach was a well-deserved academic giant, unlike Newton's group of fans, who only tried to send Newton to the highest level of the altar, and unlike Faraday and Maxwell's two god teammates, they wanted to create another new world.
What Mach has to do is to smash the old world, as for whether to create a new world is another question, Mach's weapon to break the old world is positivism, simply put, what is not confirmed by experiments does not exist, that is, absurd, incomprehensible.
Because Newton's absolute space cannot be verified, Newton is wrong, Einstein's theory of relativity is even more incredible, and there is no experiment to confirm, so the theory of relativity is also absurd.
He once bluntly declared: I must categorically deny that I am a pioneer of relativity, just as I personally reject the atomist doctrine of today's school.
Einstein was naturally arrogant, and Mach's influence had declined at that time, Mach's denial did not affect Einstein, but his rejection of atomism deeply hurt Boltzmann.
V. The Nightmare of the Master of Thermodynamics Boltzmann
As a master of thermodynamics, Boltzmann of course knows that thermodynamics is not a rigorous science, so he proposed the Boltzmann entropy formula in order to give thermodynamics a strict foundation, coupled with Planck's derivation of the Boltzmann constant, thermodynamics has basically opened up the macro world and the micro world, originally a good situation, can step into the temple of science, but met Mach who only believes in experience.
Thermodynamics must be based on the most fundamental basis that the world is composed of atoms, and at that time only Dalton imagined the atomic model, atomism, today's common sense, at that time was an open question, for Mach, who only believed in experience, macroscopic absolute space does not exist, microscopic atoms certainly do not exist, compared to atoms, Mach is more supportive of his student Osterwald's theory of energy.
Spiritualism holds that energy is the only real reality, and that matter is not the loader of energy, but only the manifestation of energy. From today's point of view, only alberty cannot be completely wrong, but at that time the two were irreconcilable contradictions.
Ostwald challenged Boltzmann, and due to Mach's influence, most scientists sided with Ostwald, and Boltzmann had only the non-argumentative Planck.
Planck, who was watching the controversy, proposed a Planck law of science: a new scientific truth cannot be implemented by persuading opponents to wait for their opinions to be well said. On the contrary, it can only be implemented when the opponents are dying and the new generation begins to become familiar with the truth.
只是这次争论先逝去的却是掌握真理的玻尔兹曼，玻尔兹曼没有爱因斯坦那种一人敌一门的气势，多年的争论对他的身心都造成了巨大的伤害，以至于后来自杀而亡。
Of course, this is not to say that Mach's stubbornness caused Boltzmann's early death, but at least his views have hindered the progress of science.
6. Contradictory Mach
Every spirited teenager goes to his own opposite in his old age, scientists like it, artists like it, Newton is like it, and Einstein is like it. This seems to be a sad cycle in the history of human development.
Mach seems to have gone to the opposite of himself in his later years, from the founder of the old world to the conservative who hindered the new world, in fact, Mach has never changed, he has always been a great positivist master, and his ideas still influence our lives to this day.
The course of human history is like an undulating mountain, there are always some great figures standing between heaven and earth in the posture of piercing the blue sky, all living beings live happily under the shelter of their shadow, but to see more brilliant sunshine, either higher than them, or farther away from them, Mach is a steep mountain, he is far enough from Newton's peak to get rid of Newton's shadow to peek into the wider world, but the mountain behind him is even more amazing, he unfortunately quickly fell into the shadow, but, We have to admit that that the first ray of brilliance was brought by him.