"In his Science of Mechanics... Ernst Mach suspended... the classic formula of the law of inertia because he believed that... [this] had to be rethought. His famous studies of Newton's terminology (in particular... absolute space and absolute time)... led Mach to propose a new formulation in which gravitation appears as a function of the entire mass distribution of the universe. In this critical reconstruction... Mach believed that it had to be shown... that even the most firmly established concepts were merely auxiliary constructs... [which] give a provisional account of relations... between our experiences. And... we tend to forget that we were the ones who introduced our concepts... Mach demands that we... keep dissolving the most firmly established concepts and formulæ... so that we do not perceive them as something independent of ourselves and allow them to become obstacles to our knowledge."
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Elisabith Nameth, "Scientific Language and Picture Language. Otto Neurath on Visualisation in Social Sciences." Image and Imaging in Philosophy, Science and the Arts (2011) Vol. 2, p. 63, ed. Richard Heinrich, Elisabeith Nameth, Wolfram Pichler, David Wagner, Proceedings of the 33rd International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg, 2010.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Mechanics
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The Science of Mechanics
The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Exposition of its Principles is an 1893 translation of the second German edition of Ernst Mach's original 1883 Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung (Mechanics and Its Evolution). It is not a treatise upon the application of the principles of mechanics. Its aim was to clear up ideas, expose the real significance of the matter, and get rid of metaphysical obscurities. The little mathematics it contains is merely secondary to that purpose. Mechanics
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