# Quote — Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics

> It might be... that... motion is determined by a medium... In such a case we should have to substitute this medium for Newton's absolute space. ...[I]t is easily demonstrable that the atmosphere is not this motion-determinative medium. We should, therefore, have to picture to ourselves some other medium, filling, say, all space, with respect to... which... we have at present no adequate knowledge. In itself such a state of things would not belong to the impossibilities. It is known, from recent hydrodynamical investigations, that a rigid body experiences resistance in a frictionless fluid only when its velocity changes. ...[T]his result is derived theoretically from the notion of inertia; but it might... also be regarded as the primitive fact from which we... start. ...[W]e might... hope to learn more in the future concerning this hypothetical medium; and from the point of view of science it would be in every respect a more valuable acquisition than the forlorn idea of absolute space.

- Author: [Ernst Mach](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mach.md)
- Book: [The Science of Mechanics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mach/the-science-of-mechanics.md)
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- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mach/the-science-of-mechanics/it-might-be-that

## More from this book

> [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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mach/the-science-of-mechanics/i-t-is-necessary.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mach/the-science-of-mechanics/the-questions-here.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ernst-mach/the-science-of-mechanics/an-instinctive-irreflective.md)