Towards the close of the eighteenth century a remarkable change... apparently an abrupt departure from the… — Ernst Mach
Towards the close of the eighteenth century a remarkable change... apparently an abrupt departure from the current trend... but... the logical outcome of the development... After an attempt... to found mechanics on Euler’s principle of least action, Lagrange, in a subsequent treatment... declared his intention of... disregarding theological and metaphysical speculations, as... precarious and foreign to science. He erected a new mechanical system on... different foundations, and no one... will dispute its excellencies. All subsequent scientists of eminence accepted Lagrange’s view, and the present attitude of physics to theology was thus substantially determined.
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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.
