Popular scientific lectures / by Ernst Mach ; translated by Thomas J. McCormack.

  • Mach, Ernst, 1838-1916.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Popular scientific lectures / by Ernst Mach ; translated by Thomas J. McCormack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/334
    TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. THE present lectures, extending ovar the period from 1864 to 1894, are here published in collected form for the first time. What few repetitions occur, in the way of examples and quotations, have been retained, as throwing additional light on the topics they are designed to illustrate. As the dates of the first five lectures are not given in the foot- notes they are here appended. The first lecture, '' On the Forms of Liquids, was delivered in 1868 and published with that On Symmetry in 1872 (Prague). The second and third lectures, on acoustics, were first published in 1865 (Graz); the fourth and fifth, on optics, in 1867 (Graz). They belong to the earliest period of Professor Mach's scientific activity, and with the lectures on electro- statics and education will more than realise the hope expressed in the author's Preface. The four remaining lectures are of a more philosophical char- acter and deal principally with the methods and nature of scientific inquiry. In the ideas summarised in them will be found one of the most important contributions to the theory of knowledge made in the last quarter of a century. All the proofs of this translation have been read by Professor Mach himself. T. J. McCORMACK. La Salle, III., December, 1894.