[E]very enlightening progress made in science is accompanied with a certain feeling of disillusionment. We… — Ernst Mach
[E]very enlightening progress made in science is accompanied with a certain feeling of disillusionment. We discover that that which appeared wonderful to us is no more wonderful than other things which we know instinctively and regard as self-evident; nay, that the contrary would be much more wonderful; that everywhere the same fact expresses itself. Our puzzle turns out then to be a puzzle no more; it vanishes into nothingness, and takes its place among the shadows of history.
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[I]t is necessary to make a distinction between mechanical experience and mechanical science... If we carefully examine the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, we shall find there pictorial representations of many kinds of implements and mechanical contrivances... long before theory was dreamed of, implements, machines, mechanical experiences, and mechanical knowledge were abundant.
The questions here dealt with have occupied me since my earliest youth, when my interest for them was powerfully stimulated by the beautiful introductions of Lagrange to... his Analytic Mechanics, as well as by the lucid and lively tract of Jolly, Principien der Mechanik (...1852). If Duehring's estimable work, Kritische Geschichte der Principien der Mechanik (...1873), did not particularly influence me, it was that at the time of its appearance, my ideas had been... published. ...[T]he reader will... find many points of agreement between Dühring's criticisms and those here expressed.
An instinctive, irreflective knowledge of the processes of nature will doubtless always precede the scientific, conscious apprehension, or investigation, of phenomena. The former is the outcome of the relation in which the processes of nature stand to the satisfaction of our wants.
