# Quote — Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics

> [W]ithin the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science... may be regarded as a minimal problem... the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.

- 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/w-ithin-the-short

## 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)