ERNST MACH’S INFLUENCE

ON FOUR JAPANESE THINKERS

 

By Michael A. Santone Jr.[1]

(Temple University, Japan)

 

 

PART ONE/ A.

 

Starting with a brief account of early Japanese interest in Western philoso­phy, part one of this paper will focus on the influence of Ernst Mach’s ide­as on a small group of philosophers of science. We will begin with Ishiwara Jun, follow with Tanabe Hajime from the influential Kyoto School of Nishida Kitaro, and conclude this section with Mach’s philosophical in­fluence on Taketani Mitsuo, a thinker of some importance about methodo­logical questions in science and a colleague of the Nobel prize winner, Yu­kawa Hideki.

Part Two will be devoted entirely to the influence of Ernst Mach on the carefully thought-out, relational philosophy of Hiromatsu Wataru, who is Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Tokyo University. (Following Japanese custom, family names are given first and then personal names second.)

The introduction of Western thought into Japan, particularly scientific and philosophical thought, was conditioned by its role in the modernization of the state.[2] Though British and American instructors at the University of Tokyo, the first and generally most important National University, intro­duced their students to Comte, Mill, Spencer, and Kant, the emphasis would change by the 1890’s. Prussia, which had recently made spectacular prog­ress with its own industrialization, became the preferred model and Ger­man philosophy soon took the forefront, with students sent to the Second Reich, first, largely to study Hegel, and second, given the strength of Neo­Kantianism in German universities, to study the major works of the sage of Konigsberg himself, who soon dwarfed his rivals in terms of major influ­ence on Japanese professional philosophers, and to a surprising extent even on physical scientists with an interest in philosophy. One should add, however, that even today, it is normal to compartmentalize philosophy as a discipline, first, away from science in general,[3] and second, as divided be­tween Japanese, Chinese, and Western thought frequently taught in differ­ent buildings and institutes, and often in their original languages or older versions of current ones. This practice has resulted in a noticeable tendency to think of all school philosophy as somewhat remote, including Western points of view.

The reception of European science was taken much more seriously, es­pecially applied science.[4] Physics tended to be a relative latecomer, but was almost immediately confronted with a significant transition from Newton­ian mechanics to the modern physics of Planck and Einstein. It seemed that just as some Japanese physicists were on the verge of mastering the earlier approach that the advent of quantum mechanics and relativity theory pro­duced considerable mental turmoil and not a little conflict within Western philosophy of nature, conflict which spilled over into Japan. On the other hand, the introduction of science has probably been somewhat facilitated by the sophisticated intellectual culture which had developed over many cen­turies, based especially in Kyoto, the old Imperial capital, culture under­standably derived largely from Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism. The vocabularies of these older traditions could be exploited in order to create the language of the new science. In addition, there was a well-developed native mathematical culture (wasan) originally stimulated by ideas from China and the need to fix the yearly calendar more exactly but which had gradually advanced to the level of pure mathematics pursued for its own sake. Western mathematics, apparently unlike physics, had been introduced from the end of the seventeenth century, though it is not clear how widely such ideas were circulated.

While some of Ernst Mach’s contributions to science and the publica­tion of his influential book The Science of Mechanics had aroused some in­terest in Japan even during the 1880’s and 1890’s, his ideas on the philosophy of science appear to have first made an impact during the first decade of the 20th century, precisely when the transition from Newtonian to modern physics was becoming serious and major scientific and philosophical conflicts were developing into the order of the day.

Mach’s philosophical influence in Japan seems to have followed at least two different paths, the first was led before 1910 by the physicist Kuwaki Ayao who also seems to have introduced Einstein’s ideas into Japan. Kuwa­ki also made a tour of Europe in 1908 and 1909 where he met Planck, Ein­stein, Poincaré, and Mach. The second group, based in Kyoto would start with professional philosophers largely focused on the ideas of Kant, Her-mann Cohen, and Rickert. But some of their students would be physicists who would study aspects of Mach’s contributions to science often together with Vladimir Lenin’s 1908 book directed against the “Empirio-Criticism” of Avenarius and Mach. The result would be greater interest in the contro­versial Austrian combined with often heated discussions about the sound­ness and applicability of his philosophy of science.

 

 

B

 

            Our account begins with the physicist Ishiwara Jun (1881-1947) who in a general sense may be considered to have worked in the half-scientific, half-philosophical path of Kuwaki and who in his Neo-Kantian way would do his very best to reconcile Mach’s ideas with those of Planck. Ishiwara graduated from the physics department of the University of Tokyo (which was then called the Imperial University of Tokyo) and continued on to gra­duate school. Unlike almost all of his colleagues, he was Protestant and the son of a Protestant minister.[5] From 1912 to 1914, he studied relativity the­ory and quantum mechanics under Sommerfeld. He also visited Einstein in Zurich. In fact, Ishiwara would serve as Einstein’s translator during the latter’s trip to Japan in 1922.

            Ishiwara obtained a position as a professor at the National University of Tohoku in northern Japan. He also published many papers for the Tokyo Society for Mathematics and Physics, which began the task of attracting in­terest in the new theoretical physics. But his position was cut short in 1921, that is, immediately before Einstein’s visit to Japan. Apparently, a love scandal broke out at his university which forced Ishiwara to resign (per­haps helping to set back the introduction of important aspects of theore­tical physics in Japan by several years in spite of the newspaper attention given to Einstein during his much publicized lectures up and down the country). Ishiwara then worked for private companies, but starting in 1931 he became editor of the important journal Kagaku (Science) published by Iwanani Shoten.

His philosophical development, which as already suggested leaned to­ward Neo-Kantian epistemology, found expression in 1929 in his book Shi­zen kagaku gairon (Outline of Natural Science). He later published a collec­tion of papers under the title Shizen kagakuteki sekaizo (A Natural Scien­tific Worldview) which appeared posthumously in 1948. In his 1929 book, Ishiwara recognized a fundamental mystery of nature, but unlike the Kyoto scholars, who we will soon discuss, attempted to fit science into a larger metaphysical or religious scheme, he clearly separated their domains, sci­ence to the natural and religion to the supernatural. All knowledge of natu­ral fact was limited to science, and Ishiwara wrote he only felt the mystery of nature when events were explained in terms of laws expressed in natural science: There should be no conflict between religion and science.

In what may seem an odd juxtaposition, he appealed to both Planck and Mach for support on the same page of Outline.[6] He drew on Planck to sup­port his view that we preserve a unitary scientific view of the world by ex­cluding sense elements by means of quantifying them and describing their relations with universal mathematical functions. But at the same time, he quoted from Mach to support his assertion that in a mathematical equation, variables can be freely moved across the equal sign, making assignments of cause and effect in terms of laws meaningless, and that such a concept of cause has made no substantial contribution to the development of physics. He ended by asserting that cause and effect are projections of the human will into natural processes.

We can perhaps better understand his attitude toward Mach and Planck by looking at an article written in 1933 called “Butsurigakujo no gainen ni tai sum yuibutsusei no imi ni tsuite” (The Meaning of Materiality with re­spect to Physical Concepts).[7] He attempted to understand the conflict be­tween the two physicists in what might seem a dialectical way. He agreed with Planck’s belief that there was ultimately one physical worldview which was unique and absolute, and in terms of which all phenomena could be explained. However, he could not accept what he regarded as the basis of Planck’s belies his focus on an ideal worldview of the future toward which recent physics converged. Since the period Planck criticized Mach (1908-1910), quantum mechanics had gone through a revolution that made such prediction unrealistic.

In order to know anything about accessible facts, which are the basis of our knowledge, he agreed with Mach that we need to emphasize sensation, without which we cannot even begin the process of acquiring knowledge. It was reasonable to reduce materiality to what seemed most manifest, which, again following Mach, consisted of sensations of resistance to touch, heat in the sense of temperature, light as vision, and sound as hearing. Physics surely ought to be the description of what one can directly observe, whe­ther it was consistent with or converged toward an ideal worldview of the future or not. We could not directly observe, for example, the orbit of an electron, only changes in the quantity of its energy or motion. For Ishi­wara, the basic quantities were the quantum of action, motion, and energy, and these produced the whole of natural phenomena, including the stimula­tions of sensation by which these basic quantities were known. Materiality existed only in the activity received in observation which could be mea­sured (the basis of the theory of measurement).

Finally, he concluded that while we must aim for a unique physical worldview as Planck did, it must be based on sensation (and thereby obser­vation) as Mach asserted. Application of physical observation must be the basis of materialistic physics, and to the extent that a unitary world view was not attained, we should assume that the theory still possessed pure or ‘metaphysical” ideas not connected with observation, and such pure ideas must eventually, as Mach suggested, be purged from the system to make it unitary.

It is doubtful whether contemporary philosophers (in particular of the Anglo-American persuasion) would find these arguments interesting in any more than a historical sense. Our brief picture of an attempted synthesis of ideas from Kant, Mach, Planck, and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics lacks sufficient clarity and detail to allow proper judg­ment, but Ishiwara’s approach does deserve respect as a bold, thought-pro­voking attempt to reconcile what some observers might consider irrecon­cilable. He did his level best to come to terms with obtuse or even contra­dictory notions as sensibly as possible. But his solution does not seem un­reasonable given the background conditions and the state of science and philosophy in the Japan of his day.

 

 

C

 

Beginning in the 1910’s, a group of philosophers (meaning those fami­liar with the Western tradition starting with the Greeks) gathered at the University of Kyoto, a school whose prestige at least in physics and philo­sophy would soon eclipse that of the University of Tokyo. Most of the members had been educated at the University of Tokyo, and were inspired to continue its research tradition aimed at achieving a historical under­standing of Western philosophy. Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), the central figure in this school who originally taught religion and moved to “pure” philosophy, marked the beginning of the attempt to initiate an interpretation of Western philosophy which would make possible its assimilation into Japanese intellectual culture. Perhaps because religion, not science, was common to East and West, this assimilation focused on trying to create a logical system to express the Eastern religious experience but patterned largely after German Idealists like Hegel, who had attempted to find a lan­guage and logical system in which to organize the data of revelation in Christianity.

One of the first references to Ernst Mach in a purely philosophical con­text was made in the preface to Nishida’s maiden work, Zen no Kenkyu (A Study of Good) in 1911. Nishida wrote that:

 

For a long time I had entertained the thought of trying to explain everything using pure experience as the only existent (jitsuzai). At first, I tried reading Mach, but was not at all satisfied. Subsequently.... I came to believe that one could escape solipsism thinking that it is not the case that the individual comes before experience, but that experience is prior to the individual and that experience is more fundamental than the distinction of the individual. Additionally, by thinking that experience is active, I was able to agree with post-Fichtean transcendental philosophy.[8]

 

But while it is not yet clear which books of Mach that Nishida may have read, the influence of Fichte and Hegel on the Kyoto philosopher can be seen everywhere in a work which as a whole attempted to establish a com­plete system of ultimate metaphysical categories founded within religion, which, as Nishida wrote, would ‘explain everything”. Nishida’s initial “ax­iom” was pure experience, which by means of self-differentiation produced epistemology, ethics, and a philosophy of religion in order to incorporate the experience of both Christianity and Buddhism. A thinker under Fich­tean or Hegelian influence, with his concomitant metaphysical and religious commitments (even though agreeing about abolition of the thing-in-itself though for different reasons) would find Mach’s phenomenalism rather un­satisfying. In subsequent works influenced mainly by Neo-Kantians, Nishi­da elaborated his approach into a system whose main axiom would be “the place of absolute nothingness”, and whose logic would be that of the “self unity of absolute contradictories”.[9] Although perhaps declining in influence in some parts of Europe during the 1920’s, German Neo-Kantian philoso­phy, in particular the perspectives of the university professors Hermann Cohen and Heinrich Rickert, became influential among other Kyoto School members as well. This was very possibly because of its emphasis on ethical reason, a major concern of the time.

While deeply influenced by religious concerns, which provided their basic framework, members of the Kyoto School also introduced Western philosophy of science. Second in stature to Nishida among the Kyoto Scho­lars was Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962)[10] who began his studies in mathema­tics but changed to philosophy and graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1908. He started his career in the sciences (writing his dissertation on the philosophy of mathematics), but became a lecturer in philosophy at Tohoku University in northern Japan in 1913. He studied in Germany from 1922 to 1924 and began teaching at the University of Kyoto in 1927, taking over Nishida’s position upon his retirement. He himself retired in 1945.

Early in his career, while still well under the influence of Nishida and the Neo-Kantians, Tanabe wrote several books introducing Western philo­sophy of science to Japanese readers. As a student, Nobel physicist Yukawa Hideki, for example, was influenced by Tanabe’s works as well as having attended Nishida’s philosophy seminar during his senior year.[11]

As early as 1915, Tanabe had published Saikin no shizen tetsugaku (Re­cent Philosophy of Nature), which deals with the development of Western thought from the Greeks to Kant and the Neo-Kantians while overlooking Descartes. He emphasized what he believed were the main characteristics, goals, and methods of European natural science with physics as a represen­tative example.[12] He was particularly sympathetic to Cohen, perhaps be-cause they shared a background in mathematics. In the 1915 book, Tanabe wrote that the final goal of human civilization which included science, art, and religion, was the incarnation of ideal values which were present in existence: actual life was a means to this end. Contrary to pragmatism, it was not the case that life was the goal and truth the means, but that truth was the goal and life was the means. Tanabe followed the principle of Neo-­Kantian value theory giving preference to ethical over theoretical values. Science in particular purified disordered a priori principles which were present in existence and known in experience through intuition. This exper­ience was trans-individual (thus allowing science to claim universal validi­ty), and after differentiating experience into subject and object, scientific laws expressed the relations between objects. Natural science was an aspect of the self-appearance of existence, and hypotheses and theories naturally changed in the process of its development.

Tanabe objected to Mach’s idea that natural law was merely a product of economy of thought and was complex only to the degree required by the needs of guiding life’s activities. Nor did he accept that hypotheses are merely guides to future experimentation.

According to Tanabe, his scheme excluded all epistemologies based on copy theories, whether the object “copied” was within or beyond exper­ience. And in his opinion, this excluded Mach’s element-based monism as well:

 

The theories of science are neither related to the cognitive ability of the hu­mans who know them nor connected to whether or not humans know tern. They express the unchanging principles which have an inner relation to the reality which is the basis of experience, or to speak in the language of modern mathematics, express an invariant.[13]

 

Tanabe was following the preoccupation of German philosophy with awareness as “knownness” (Bewusstheit), and not so much as the individual knowing consciousness (Bewusstsein), a trend, for example, conspicuously followed by Hermann Cohen. The word ‘invariant in the quote was given in German and was taken from Planck, a Neo-Kantian who gradually be­came a realist of the indirect or representationalist type, and who like Ta­nabe was sympathetic with religion. Tanabe used Planck for a measure of support in his arguments against Mach.

In his discussion of Mach, Tanabe did not criticize his assertion that sensations were not individual (a point common to Tanabe’s notion of ex­perience), but argued that his sensations were simply abstract elements analyzed out of direct experience. True science must be built on concrete liv­ing experience. Direct experience was not a collection of elements, but was given form, and was a system unified in its inner relations. Space and time, which Mach tried to reduce to kinds of sensation, were for Tanabe (and the Neo-Kantians) not sensations but constructive forms based on inner rela­tions of the original experience which developed internally. “Facts were a product of cognitive construction, not a collection of sensations.

Again, following Planck, Tanabe asserted that while Ernst Mach’s view contributed much to understanding the origin of physics, his epistemology was contrary to the spirit of physics. Physical theories grew by a process of excluding sense elements, and reducing all phenomena to quantitative or mathematical relations or non-sensory concepts. In short, Sensations were not quantitative; laws were not copies of sensations, but cognitive construc­tions which act according to their own norms; “Truth” as demanded by sci­ence existed in the sense of a process in which existence developed intern­ally and manifested itself; and the truth realized by science, Tanabe asser­ted, was an absolute truth.

Tanabe’s characterization of Mach’s theory will strike many readers as oversimplified, and it is difficult to ascertain whether the views were based on a reading of primary or secondary sources. His view of Mach was de­termined in general by his Neo-Kantianism, in particular by Cohen, while particular criticisms were derived from Planck. But one feels that the critique went astray in that it was addressed to technical aspects of Mach’s epistemology, and failed to come to terms with more fundamental ontologi­cal and epistemological differences. For example, while Tanabe criticized Mach as mentioned above he did not refer to Descartes in a significant way, which suggests that Mach unlike Descartes was at least still within the pale of what he considered to be important and reputable thought. Many phi­losophers tend to ignore extreme opponents, saving most criticism for “friendly” half-allies. Both Mach and Tanabe, for example, favored sci­ence, favored reason, and favored the use of both observation and mathematics. Most of their differences were well within the general tradition of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, but even within that tradition Tanabe neglected to make what are normally considered to be rather fundamental distinctions between Neo-Kantianism and Mach’s basic Neo-Humean position.

 

 

D

 

The spread of Marxist ideas in Japan during the 1920’s and 1930’s while increasingly opposed by the Japanese government, especially during the latter decade, put its mark on the thinking of numerous intellectuals, including many scientists and philosophers. Like Neo-Kantianism, it was very critical of Ernst Mach’s ideas, but not because it was so distant from Marxist advocacy of science and opposition to Christian theology, which it was not, but because “Machism” had an appeal largely to the same intellec­tual audience which the Marxists wanted to influence. “Machism” and “Marxism” were competitors for intellectual allegiance, but even more dis­tressing from a Marxist perspective, many Machists attempted to argue that phenomenalism and economy of thought were compatible with Dialectical Materialism, as if one could and should combine both philosophies. This heretical tendency helped drive Vladimir Lenin into writing his 1908 book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism which was largely a criticism of Ernst Mach’s world view.

On the academic scene, many of the ideas of Karl Marx gained a real platform with the establishment of economics departments in the 1920’s at Japanese universities. The interests were chiefly economic (the interpreta­tion of surplus value theory), but philosophical concerns were eventually integrated into economic studies. Marxist-influenced philosophers such as Tosaka Jun (1900-1945) and Saigusa Hiroto (1892-1963) tended to follow Lenin’s critique of Mach. Tosaka wrote in his book Kagakuron (Theory of Science):

 

This (Mach’s) approach, in fact, tears positivist natural science away from so-called critical philosophy (Kantianism and Neo-Kantianism) and causes a self-inflicted wound, as Lenin has correctly analyzed and criticized.[14]

 

Saigusa in his book Tetsugaku Nyumon (Introduction to Philosophy)[15] also cites Lenin, and in a typical move assimilated Mach to Berkeley as an explanation of subjective “taking in” of experience, and insisted that those who rejected the scientific nature of materialism leaned toward Mach and Avenarius in accusing it of “mysticism” for accepting things which lay out­side of experience, such as matter.

            Turning to a figure of greater importance for philosophy of science, Taketani Mitsuo (b. 1911) was a Marxist-influenced physicist who worked extensively with Yukawa Hideki as an advisor on methodology, that is, with the man who became Japan’s best-known scientist. In addition to numerous contributions of his own, Taketani co-authored in 1938 the last two of the series of four papers in which meson theory was developed with Yukawa and Sakata Shoichi. He had graduated from the physics department at the University of Kyoto (also Yukawa’s alma mater) in 1934 and taught at Rik­kyo University, later becoming a freelance researcher. His range of ‘inter­ests has been very wide, extending from theoretical physics through tech­nology and history of science[16] to and including philosophy.

After the war in 1946, he published a collection of papers called Ben­shoho no shomondai (Problems of Dialectic) which had originally been written during the 30s and 40s. The following presentation of his point of view is based on the papers collected in this publication plus a 1951 paper which appeared in Shinri no ha ni tachite (In the Course of our Study).[17] Takatani wrote that his own methodology in physics which he labeled “dia­lectical analysis” had been inspired by Marx’s multidimensional logical ana­lysis of what he called “commodity”, a substance whose phenomenal form consisted simultaneously of use and exchange values, while at the essential level, value and labor power explained the necessity of the phenomenal form.[18] Expanding on the conventional two-fold view of science as consis­ting of phenomenal and essential levels, Taketani developed this into a method that pealed away layers first from sensory phenomena revealing a substantial layer and then pealing away from that until one finally reached an essential layer, the process being repeatable as the essential became the main focus of phenomenal analysis. He applied this three-stage, semi-dia­lectical theory to the development of physics, emphasizing that it did not represent necessary historical progress, but rather the progressive stripping away of simultaneously existing layers.

Assuming that our knowledge of nature consisted of a collection of sys­tematized judgments, Taketani grounded his three-stage theory on a theory of judgment. The type of judgment must reflect the character of each stage, and Taketani followed Hegel’s dialectical scheme of the Science of Logic, applying “in-itself” singular judgments at the phenomenal level, particular “for-itself” judgments at the substantial level, and universal “in-for-itself” judgments at the essential level.[19] The first stage, the phenomenal, consisted of the description of singular observations made without the intention of finding a law. Methodologically, this level was associated with Machism, and historically, for example, with Tycho Brahe’s astronomical observa­tions, his emphasis on empirical description. The second stage, the substan­tial, ascertained the structures which were manifest at the phenomenal le­vel, making particular judgments showing law-like correlations between some observations. This was characteristic of Kepler’s three laws of plane­tary motion, introducing a substantial model (heliocentrism) which had gi­ven order to Brahe’s observations. These laws were phenomenal, not ne­cessary. The final essential stage used universal judgments to help compre­hend why the structures of the substantial were necessary, and was repre­sented by Newton’s demonstration of the necessity of motion by introdu­cing the essential notion of force or gravity as cause.[20]

According to Taketani, the proof of necessity was found in the activi­ties, experiments, and labor of human beings, a facet introduced into phy­sics by Galileo, a physics was born during the Renaissance-development of production technology. This concept was related closely to his Marxist-based theory of technology as praxis. This methodology also served to ori­ent the direction of research in physics, as will be explained below.

Since Taketani considered Galileo to be a transitional figure in the movement of physics from the phenomenal to the substantial stage, it is not surprising that he criticized Mach’s representation of Galileo as a pheno­menalist in The Science of Mechanics. His criticism of Mach’s analysis of the relation between Aristotelian-Scholastic physics and Galileo according to his schema began with the relation of force and acceleration. Mach had written that when Aristotle examined the motion of a falling stone in its al­leged return to its “natural place”, he was using explanatory methods, whereas Galileo used simple description.[21] Mach considered Galileo’s me­chanics to be complete in so far as it was merely a description of motion, but Taketani, who unlike Mach refused to reduce dynamics to kinematics, insisted that for Galileo mechanics was much more than description of mo­tion, even if Galileo himself could not provide the dynamic explanation which Newton was able to put forward. In his dialogues on mechanics, Ga­lileo, regardless of how unconsciously, was moving toward the substantial level in mechanics when he considered acceleration to mediate between force and motion. He distinguished between the case when force was pre­sent (acceleration) and when it was absent (uniform velocity), thus linking force to acceleration, whereas Aristotle simply linked force with velocity as one commonly does in everyday life where one tends to judge force by its potential impact against an object or counterforce.

Taketani’s criticism of Mach’s analysis turned to his exclusion of the notion of force as a cause which Ernst Mach considered “metaphysical”. Taketani agreed with Mach that the relation between force and acceleration was empirical, but Mach and Machists had tried to exclude the concept of force as a cause, dismissing force linked with cause as a metaphysical abuse. This was because according to Taketani, Mach lacked a multidimen­sional physics for properly analyzing the mediation of force and motion by acceleration, reducing science to a mere description of phenomena. Mach avoided use of the term “force”, in favor of the expression “circumstances determinative of motion” (Bewegung bestimmende Umstände). Taketani reminded us that force did not determine motion (an Aristotelian idea), but rather with Galileo, force determines acceleration, a point which must be understood to understand Newton’s multi-dimensional theory which covers both “substance and phenomenon”.

Aristotle’s theory was one-dimensionally substantial, but Dr. Mach’s was one-dimensionally phenomenal. According to Taketani, motion was not directly determined by force, but by initial conditions, which were contin­gent conditions at the phenomenal level. Force as cause was not something hidden behind phenomena, but worked at the essential level. It could intro­duce a necessity to the substantial level telling us why, given force and contingent initial and boundary conditions, the necessary interactions at the substantial level produced the phenomenal motion which appeared as it did. Newton’s method could relate all levels (phenomenal, substantial, and essential), and force could not simply be understood as a “circumstance de­terminative of motion”.

Finally, the reason Takatani understood force as a cause is found in his general theory of technology as praxis. In praxis, to put an object into a state of motion, we must apply appropriate initial and boundary conditions, and force, which produces a concept of cause, is what actually makes praxis possible, and is not simply a subjective criterion. In attempting to avoid metaphysics, Mach simply adopted its antipode, offering something on the same level, but lacking a notion of praxis.[22]

If this were all there were to the matter, then Mach could simply be dismissed as having put forward a mistaken understanding of the relation between Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton, or a misguided analysis of the history of mechanics generally. However, a proper worldview (which the approach of Mach was not even in the opinion of its author) was necessary according to Taketani because it helped orient the direction of future re­search, and in this respect, Machism was still regrettably producing a per­nicious influence on the development of physics.[23]

In his 1951 essay, he wrote that around the time of the development of meson theory in 1936, physics was still dominated at least methodologically by Machism and Neo-Kantianism. Concerning Machism he wrote that:

 

It was thought that physics discovers laws by manipulating empirical facts, and only sense impressions are real; all the rest is constructed by the subject who arranges experienced facts. Moreover, it was maintained that the es­sence of science lies in function, and therefore, in the course of scientific development, substance will be absorbed in function... If applied to phy­sics, such thinking made it nonsense to consider the internal structure of the nucleus - with a diameter of only about 10-12 cm -- or its structural ele­ments. It is not the role of science to arrange mathematically the various phenomenal aspects that concern the nucleus.[24]

 

“At the time”, he continued, “the problem of nuclear force and beta de­cay were dealt with mainly from the phenomenological side.”[25] The metho­dological implication was that concepts were to organize empirical data, and the introduction of a notion not supported by data was contrary to va­lid scientific procedure.[26] He then cited Niels Bohr as having been unhappy with Fermi’s proposal of the neutrino to preserve the law of conservation of energy in beta decay because such a particle had never been observed, preferring a statistical interpretation of the law or jettisoning it for new laws.[27]

Yet, in introducing his notion of the meson (the U-quantum at the time) to explain nuclear forces, a theory based on inference and calculation, not observation, Yukawa would be following exactly the method of Fermi (and before him, Heisenberg and Pauli): molecular analogy.

When Niels Bohr came to Japan in 1937 and discussed Yukawa’s propo­sal, he rejected it: “Why do you want to create such a new particle?” he wondered.[28] Yukawa and his associates, including Taketani, continued to develop the theory despite Bohr’s opposition, and the fact that Yukawa’s earlier publication of 1936, introducing the meson, as Segré wrote, “. . .did not cause a great stir. At the time nobody had yet seen particles similar to those proposed by Yukawa, and thus they appeared mainly as an interesting speculation.”[29] Yukawa was aware that his arguments had “merely specu­lative character”,[30] and he even wrote in his 1935 paper introducing what would become known as the meson, “As such a quantum with large mass and positive or negative charge has never been found by experiment, the above theory appears to be on a wrong line.”[31] He then showed that a me­son would not be observed outside of the nucleus unless the absolute value of the difference in transition energy between the neutron and proton state was much greater than the mass of the meson times the speed of light if squared, a condition which never obtains.[32] In his paper of 1937, he stated that with the observation of a particle in cosmic radiation which appeared to match the meson, then “...the only serious drawback to our theory disap­pears.”[33]

Taketani attributed Bohr’s rejection of Fermi’s neutrino and Yukawa’s meson to his observation-obsessed Machism.[34] In 1940, during the later de­velopment of meson theory (the symmetrical meson theory), he and Sakata found themselves on the defensive, co-authoring a paper in which they sug­gested that neutral mesons had escaped observation because of their ex­tremely short lifetime.[35]

Yukawa, Sakata, and Taketani persisted on in the development of meson theory in spite of such adverse circumstances because Taketani had conclu­ded that at the time quantum mechanics had progressed past the phenome­nal stage (at which Bohr and the Machists had stalled) and was at the sub­stantial stage. At this stage, it was still concerned with organization at the level of substance, that is, to show that substances (or particles) were pro­ducing the observations. This was not the time for a radical change in the theory as it stood (as had been asserted, for example, by Bohr and Schrödinger), and physicists therefore should continue using substantialist me­thods. Taketani wrote in 1951:

 

Throughout these thrusts into the dark, it was the three-stage theory of ma­terialistic dialectics that guided our research and fortified our resolution to overcome difficulties. We maintained the following viewpoint of our metho­dology: In contrast to current opinion that difficulties of nuclear theory lie in some deficiency in quantum mechanics itself, the problems of the meson theory should be attacked within the framework of quantum mechanics by using the correspondence principle. Our method focused on substance. That is, we thought that nuclear physics was at the stage where its main problems were the investigation of what the constituent substances might be, and what might be the properties of these substances. We felt that we were still far from the stage at which quantum mechanics itself should be fundamentally modified.[36]

 

That they depended on the correspondence principle may show that they were not dogmatically anti-Bohr, but this related to a calculation tech­nique rather than an epistemological problem per se. Nevertheless, Yuka­wa s method (following Pauli, Heisenberg, and Fermi) of introducing an unobserved particle to resolve the problem of nuclear force was justified in spite of the rebuff from such a notable physicist as Bohr. Taketani conclu­ded that:

 

This was the merit of our methodological attack based on the three-stage theory of material dialectics. With idealistic Machism we might have become last or even seduced into an overall denial of the theory.[37]

 

This appears to show the real importance of having a proper methodo­logy. When the scientist is presented with a contradiction or dilemma, the correct methodology should make it much easier to determine the correct path to take: During the 1930’s this may have meant either change the the­ory and laws or introduce new substances (particles). Machism in all cases, that is, when used as an exclusive methodology, seemed to lead to the wrong choice and to have produced wasted effort.

The problems of the 1930’s were largely resolved within the context of the time by the successive introduction of new particles: the neutron, neu­trino, meson, and positron. This strongly suggests that Taketani’s methodo­logy - largely developed during the period and before its results were able to be fairly judged - was basically sound and had explanatory value, per­haps considerably more sound and more enlightening than some recent me­thodological approaches, such as that of Imre Lakatos and his theory of progressive and degenerating problem shifts.

Writing in 1946, Taketani asserted that quantum mechanics was begin­ning to enter the essential stage, which would demonstrate the unity of par­ticles and their function and the reason why this substantial level structure was necessary.[38] We note that Yukawa’s description of the situation of me­son theory in 1949 was very much in. the style of Taketani, discussing phe­nomenological observations, then moving to his substantial stage, “...we are still at the stage of accepting different kinds of mesons...”, to an essential stage, giving “…fundamental laws determining the masses of various kinds of particles which appear to us to be so irregularly distributed”, and “...the law which guarantees the stability of the whole system of elementary particles interacting with each other and changing from one to another.”[39]

A comprehensive understanding of Taketani’s three-stage theory is de­pendent on his theory of technology, but this would take us too far away from Mach. Nevertheless, in spite of the impressive character and clear uti­lity of Taketani’s methodology of science a few comments should be made about possible limitations to his approach. For example, there is an eclectic aspect to his work which may not be able to withstand close analysis, and one may also legitimately wonder whether his methodology applies to other fields as well as it apparently does to physics. Nor is it clear why he so strongly emphasizes ideas drawn from Hegel’s philosophy, especially from the latter’s theory of judgment, when, first, Taketani’s own epistemology seems incompatible with that of Hegel, and second, when there seem to be other more recent sources closer to his own epistemology available. Con­cerning the history of science, there is grave doubt whether Bohr’s views can be so readily assimilated to Machism, since that implies that Bohr was more consistent on the one side and narrower in outlook on the other than appears likely.[40] Finally, Taketani’s own curious admission that, “Once the results prove correct and natural, then the methodology used has less importance”,[41] while perhaps emphasizing the need for an open mind and possible influence from Heraclitus or Hegel seems to undermine his own claim expressed elsewhere on the importance of an external method to re­gulate one’s thinking while doing science, a claim which his three-stage the­ory appears to solidly substantiate. But on the other side, Hirosige Tetsu has argued that Taketani’s three-stage theory bore no relation to the deve­lopment of meson theory, and that Taketani missed predicting a number of important events in physics that he should have been able to predict.[42] We cannot settle the dispute here, but what does seem evident is that Taketani incorporated part of Mach’s philosophy into a three-stage methodology of science which is so strikingly appropriate to understanding recent develop­ments in physics when seen within a larger context as to deserve much wider attention from scientists, methodologists, and philosophers.

The rest of our story from the middle 1930s until the end of World War II is not a happy one. Most work in physics and philosophy apparently came to a halt. The Tokko, or “thought police”, suppressed philosophy not in accord with military ideology. Leftist philosophers like Tosaka and Miki, who worked as popular writers at that time because they had lost their university positions, died in prison. The repression was directly or indi­rectly supported by several members of the Kyoto school. Nishida’s “unity of absolute contradictories” was employed perhaps not always with his full approval in order to give a metaphysical justification for the necessity of conflict between the ostensible ideals of the Greater East Asian Co-Pros­perity Sphere and less savory realities such as the Rape of Nanking. Many contradictions were presumably overcome (to speak in dialectical or Neo­Hegelian terms) in the historical avatar of the “place of absolute nothing­ness”, which some people identified with the house of the Japanese emperor himself, keeping in view that in much Oriental thought “nothingness” has a positive connotation and often means peace of mind or freedom from bad things such as desire.

Even Tanabe, who we have already discussed, was influenced by the spirit of the times. He wrote in the preface to his book of 1936 Tetsugaku to Kagaku to no aida (Between Philosophy and Science):

 

…overcoming international and domestic crises and achieving our country’s historical mission cannot be done in a brief fit of excitement. Disinterested and meticulous plans guided by the consciousness of this mission must be given a correct basis in knowledge and suffused with a strong will. The passion of the love of the country must be accompanied by the scientific spi­rit. Extolling love of country, today there is a great pressing need for the evoking of the scientific spirit.[43]

 

The book was dedicated to the end of bringing the two together. Nishi­da, the longtime mentor of the Kyoto School, would die a few months be­fore the war came to a close.

Work on meson theory also stopped as physics became directed towards improving military technology for the war effort. Taketani was imprisoned for “...my analyses of quantum mechanics, my analyses of the development of nuclear physics, and my methodological approach to meson theory - in short, my research activities on natural dialectics.”[44] Taketani’s work dimi­nished at the time because his health had declined due to imprisonment.

 

 

PART TWO

 

After the war, the Kyoto School’s philosophy declined because of its perceived complicity in the war effort.[45] Tanabe Hajime went into a life of seclusion to develop his philosophy of repentance. Marxism became influ­ential as the philosophy of powerful labor groups involved in postwar re­construction of the peacetime economy,[46] as well as because the Marxists were one of the only groups to resist fascism consistently during the war. (Reflecting a perceived failure of many prewar values, the other influential movement was existentialism, in particular Heidegger and Sartre.)

The generally Marxist orientation in philosophy of science was repre­sented by the Democratic Science Society (DSS). This group was concerned with methodological praxis in theory of science, and was widely supported by scientists. On the other hand, there were the “academic” philosophers of science, represented by groups such as the Association for the Foundations of Science and the Association for the Philosophy of Science. They were concerned with the technical theory of science, and largely followed logical positivism.

Neither of the groups sharply questioned the meaning of “science” or “rationality”, both maintaining a scientistic attitude assimilating knowledge to scientific knowledge. During the 1960’s, Hiromatsu Wataru, along with Hirosige Tetu, were the first in Japan to begin the questioning of modern rationalism as represented in Western philosophy. Hiromatsu was born in 1933, and after graduating from the University of Tokyo philosophy de­partment would teach at the University of Nagoya before returning to the University of Tokyo as professor in the Department of the History and Phi­losophy of Science. He has been most strongly influenced by Marx and worked to develop his own epistemology and ontology, but also elements of Neo-Kantianism, Husserl, and several Continental philosophers can be seen in his work. He also analyses parallels between Western and Buddhist meta­physics. He has done extensive analyses of reification and intersubjectivity grounded in role theory. He was the co-translator of the Japanese transla­tions of Mach’s Analysis of Sensations and Knowledge and Error, and con­tributed introductory essays to the translations. To understand Hiromatsu’s view of Mach’s significance, I will briefly characterize Hiromatsu’s analy­sis of his position in the history of Western philosophy as it was in Mach’s time.

Very roughly, Hiromatsu has developed the characterization of the for­mation of modern Western philosophy as being bound by the subject/object schema that has its origin in dualist Cartesian substantialism. Within epis­temology, this dualism is worked out based upon the following three pro­positions, stated along with their criticism and means of resolution.[47]

The first proposition is the “individuality” of the subject (Satz der Per­sönlichkeit). Epistemologically, the subject is understood as the personal consciousness of each individual, and all subjects are isomorphic. This pro­position has been rendered untenable by modern research in the anthro­pology of nonliterate societies and the psychology of psychiatric patients. Its resolution requires recognition that consciousness is socially intersub­jectivized and that there is a role of the other in knowledge (the categories of culture learned from the other mediate my relation with nature and society: I never encounter an object directly).

The second proposition is the “trialism” of knowledge (Schema der Tri­arität). The content of consciousness that is directly given to the knowing subject is separated from the object itself such that knowing consists of three parts: conscious activity, the content of consciousness, and the object itself. In addition, at least part of the content of consciousness is actively contributed by the subject. In overturning the constancy hypothesis, Gestalt psychology renders this proposition suspect, and resolution requires recog­nition of the Gestalt articulation of sensation as intersubjectively deter­mined, not a form assembled from the elements of the contents of con­sciousness by the activity of consciousness.

Finally, the third proposition is the interiority of the given (Satz der Immanenz oder Satz des Bewusstseins). What is known is only the content of consciousness: perceptual images, ideas, representations, etc. The exis­tence of collective representations cannot be explained under this assump­tion, and its resolution requires an analysis of reification.

More particular to the natural sciences, the dualistic framework and its three propositions could accommodate Newtonian mechanism and atomism and its epistemology, but has failed to assimilate the two pillars of modern physics, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Hiromatsu argues that the problems of epistemology and ontology that first appeared in the context of this new physics are not actually unique to it. They are merely the most dramatic and acute symptoms of a systematically impaired ontolo­gy and epistemology that no amount of therapy will cure. Overcoming these problems requires nothing less than a jettisoning of substantialist Car­tesian dualism and substance-attribute view of matter, and as indicated by the example of physics: the development of a relationalist world view in which the relation is given ontological priority.

Although Mach was a physicist and Hiromatsu regards his philosophy as insufficiently mature, he argues that while his philosophy did not itself es­cape Western philosophy’s dualistic framework, in replacing Cartesian sub­stantialist dualism with a neutral monism, his approach provided a decisive inner critique of dualism and the subject-object schema, and was an ad­vance towards a relationist epistemology and ontology. The hint from Mach is best clarified by an analysis of how the relation between his philo­sophy (epistemology and ontology) and its influence on Einstein, whose theory of relativity and quantum mechanics broke out of the old frame­work and has provided the new one for modern physics. Finally, from the point of view of his relationist ontology, Hiromatsu offers a diagnosis and cure for the problems which originate in realist understanding of relativity theory.

Hiromatsu argues that by using functional relations, Mach avoided both substantialism and the concepts of cause and effect, which contain a hidden concept of personification.[48] Materialism and idealism simply suppress one side of the subject/object dualism while accepting the framework. Mach avoided this framework because, instead of seeing the subject/object struc­ture as primary, elements are ‘prepersonal”, and thus the first proposition can be mitigated. He posited a monism of neutral sensations as primary and the ‘mental” subject and “physical” object as secondary complexes of func­tionally related sensations: color, heat, pressure, space, time. As subject and object are secondary constructions or complexes of sensations, they cannot be the “cause” of sensations, and therefore an “object itself” and “subject itself” are excluded from epistemological consideration, mitigating prob­lems entailed by propositions two and three.

Aiming to clarify Mach’s role in the development of modern science, Hiromatsu begins his analysis of the relation between Mach and Einstein with the logical structure of their concepts as they relate both the special and general theories of relativity. Analysis of the similarity in logical structure shows that Einstein’s concepts can be derived from Mach’s with the addition of a few elements, indicating the closeness of their thought. Mach’s operationalist criticism of Newton’s physical concepts provided Einstein with both a means for making explicit Newton’s conceptual sys­tem, and a technique for concept formation that allowed him to reform fundamental physical concepts that became the basis of the theories of rela­tivity. Hiromatsu does not pretend to know what transpired in Einstein’s mind while he was writing the paper of 1905, but attempts to show as an outside observer filiations in the logical structure between Mach’s and Einstein’s concepts.

In his book Sotaiseiriron no tetsugaku (The Philosophy of Relativi­ty),[49] Hiromatsu’s analysis of this conceptual filiations between Mach and Einstein centers on the concepts of mass, space, time, and dynamics. Mach pointed out that Newton’s definition of mass only works with respect to ho­mogeneous substances. (Mach does not mention that Newton entertained a homogeneity produced by “inner substance”.) He redefined mass in terms of an observable or measurable property which determines a relationship between two bodies in terms of inertial mass. Hiromatsu believes that this concept was a direct precursor to Einstein’s concept of mass, but under­standing the link that he proposes between the two concepts depends on his analysis of Mach’s concept of space as an acceleration-determining medium and its inconsistency within his definition of mass.

Hiromatsu argues that even more than Mach’s critical analysis of New­ton’s concept of space, it was his reconstruction of it that influenced Ein­stein. Newton’s space had no physical effect relationship on matter, but only a relation of geometrical position. Mach suggested the possibility of a space being filled with a medium that might determine an object’s position. Mach concluded by saying that this medium would be more valuable to science than Newton’s “forlorn idea of absolute space”,[50] but that at pre­sent, nothing was known about such a hypothetical medium and the only way known to measure position was with respect to other fixed bodies. Hiromatsu then asserts the similarity of logical structure of their two con­ceptions is demonstrated in Einstein’s quote about Mach’s medium in Ether and Relativity: “… this conception of the ether to which we are led by Mach’s way of thinking differs essentially from the ether as conceived by Newton, by Fresnel, and by Lorentz. Mach’s ether not only conditions the behavior of inert masses, but is also determined by them….Mach’s idea finds its full development in the ether of the general relativity. . Empty space in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic…”[51] In general relativity, space determines the path of matter and matter deter­mines the shape of space.

Then, turning to this geometry, Hiromatsu points out that Mach, con­trary to those who considered it to be an arbitrary fiction of the mathema­tical imagination, believed physical space was probably non-Euclidean.[52] It exists as a positive object (with its property as an acceleration determining medium in the background). Like any theory, a geometrical theory is an economical description of reality, and in Mach’s opinion, theories are all equally valid until it is determined which one most economically describes experience.

Hiromatsu indicates that a further reason for Mach to accept non-Eucli­dean geometry was his distinction between “metrical space” and “physiolo­gical space”, the first being the derived Euclidean space of classical physics and the second the primitive space of the empirically directly given.[53] “Physiological space” is neither homogenous nor symmetrical, and is most appropriately described by non-Euclidean geometry. If we introduce the concept of metrical as an inseparable part of space, the constancy and rigi­dity of rulers must be reconsidered. While not writing in terms of coordi­nates, Mach recognized that if a ruler and object undergo expansion or contraction while moving together through space, they may not appear to change in size if they are in the same frame of reference. Mach moved from the relativity of spatial metrical to what we could call the relativity of space itself. If “space were a movement-determining medium” and this concept of metrical were under-stood together, asserts Hiromatsu, we could understand them to be the precursor of Einstein’s concept of space.

Mach’s rejection of Newton’s notion of absolute time as a metaphysical superfluity is well-known, but with respect to Einstein, what draws Hiro­matsu’s attention is Mach’s operationalist definition of simultaneity, which he argues prefigures Einstein’s, and his attempt to eliminate time, reducing it to a spatial determination. Even if we observe an eclipse of two stars and an event on earth occurs simultaneously, operationally we cannot speak of the eclipse as having “actually” occurred millions of years ago.[54] In an ope­rationalist definition, “simultaneous” must be oriented to observed simulta­neity -- simultaneity within the observer’s systems of time sensations -- and thus the observer cannot be excluded from the concept of time any more than from that of space. However, Hiromatsu argues, because the constancy of the speed of light had yet to be discovered, this had no practical signifi­cance. But if we include this constancy of the speed of light, then we arrive at special relativity with logical necessity.

Hiromatsu concludes that all three of Einstein’s claims about time (that two events will be a priori simultaneous in two different systems: concepts and concept systems are only valid in their utility for Orientierung: abso­lute time cannot be measured, and time must be defined so as to be measu­rable) have all been previously asserted by Mach (Einstein follows Mach’s usage of the word “Orientierung” from Die Analyse der Empfindungen), and indeed if time is defined as suggested by Mach’s procedure, Einstein’s time dilation follows with logical necessity.

Hiromatsu suggests that Mach’s reduction of time to spatial determination of a sense index and his use of functional description instead of cause-effect explanations allow elimination of time as an independent variable in the description of a phenomenon as a functionally dependent relation be­tween sense indices. While Mach recognized a specific sensation of time, it cannot be incorporated into an intersubjective system of order. Reducing time to a spatial determination allows movement previously described by a thee-dimensional space-coordinate system and a time-coordinate system to be described by one four-dimensional spatial-coordinate system, with the fourth-coordinate according with s = vt oriented to the constant movement of a watch or celestial body. Thus Hiromatsu concludes, “...(this) four-dimensional description has essentially the same structure as the four-dimensional description in which the fourth-coordinate of light-time 1 = ct is introduced”.[55] Of course, “Mach himself was not oriented toward the idea or thought of a four-dimensional continuous body, nor did he link the non-Euclidean character of physical space with a four-dimensional coor­dinate-system, but the path to four-dimensional space-time was opened up for Einstein by Mach’s critique of Newton.”[56]

Finally, Hiromatsu analyses the relationship between Mach and Einstein in terms of dynamics, in particular, Mach’s critique of Newton’s laws of motion and the alternatives to them that he proposed. As is well known, Mach not only criticized Newton’s definitions and laws, but also offered alternatives. One of Mach’s experimental propositions read:

 

The mass-ratios of bodies are independent of the character of the physical states (of the bodies) that condition the mutual accelerations, be those states electrical, magnetic, or what not.[57]

 

Returning to the concept first mentioned, Mach viewed it as an experimental fact that qualities such as color, smell, the electro-chemical, etc., do not affect mass, and if so, transitivity is preserved. However, mass is de­pendent upon the condition of motion of the body, which implies for Hiromatsu the collapse of Mach’s definition of mass. Motion has a dy­namic relation with respect to space as medium, and thus the acceleration­ determining relations are also related to space, which again is inconsistent with the above proposition, where the mass-ratio of two objects is being determined without considering space.[58] Such inconsistencies, Hiromatsu maintains, were resolved by Einstein.

Hiromatsu quotes Einstein to the effect that he agreed with the points predicted by Mach (that the inertia of an object would increase if the amount of mass of objects in the vicinity increased, and acceleration would increase if neighboring bodies accelerated)[59] were incorporated in general relativity as the relativity of inertial actions. Einstein’s general relativity also supported Mach’s assertion that this interaction would hold only in a finite universe. The one point which separated Mach and Einstein was that Mach assumed that, using a quasi-Euclidean space, inertia was a type of in­teraction between bodies like universal gravitation, which, Einstein main­tained, was mistaken: Mach’s conception required non-Euclidean space. Hi­romatsu writes that Einstein was able to remove this inconsistency between Mach’s principles by orienting his physics around the constancy of light coupled with his theory of space and time.

Moving to the next level of analysis, Hiromatsu considers the epistemo­logical and ontological influence of Mach on Einstein.[60] He maintains that Einstein himself acknowledged the former (though later rejecting it) while according to Hiromatsu there was no ontological influence. Hiromatsu makes two important points about this difference. First, as evidence for it, he notes that in all of Einstein’s writing concerning Machist ideas which influenced or were rejected by him (which one may add only appeared in popular publications or correspondence), only epistemological ideas are mentioned, not ontological ones. Second, Hiromatsu points out that the epistemological ideas accepted by young Einstein, for example, the opera­tionalist definition of concepts, were all compatible with both realist and phenomenalist ontologies. Early Einstein was not a realist, if by this label one would indicate a Newtonian sense of realism, which suggests that he could have accepted most of Mach’s critique of Isaac Newton’s definitions of space, time, and mass, including their operationalist definitions without ever having been a phenomenalist in Mach’s sense either (provided that the early Einstein completely comprehended the meaning and implications of Mach’s phenomenalism). Ontologically central to Einstein’s physics was the concept of field, while force and matter appeared to be central for Newton.

One example of a popular text in which Einstein dealt with Mach was in his obituary of him, written in early 1916, a few weeks after Einstein’s ma­jor work on the general theory of relativity had come out.[61] In this text, Einstein remarked on the usefulness of the critical analysis of established concepts in physics whose origins may have been forgotten and may have come to seem natural. In particular, he mentioned Mach’s critique of New­ton’s concepts of space, time, and mass (treated above) and bucket experi­ment, and quoted extensively from Mach’s Science of Mechanics. Einstein concluded with the now well-known remark that if Mach had been a little younger and his mind more flexible, and had the constancy of the speed of light been recognized as a problem among physicists during his youth, it would not have been unlikely that he could have discovered relativity him­self.

Hiromatsu uses this suggestion that Mach could have discovered rela­tivity as the starting point for his own analysis of its implications as to why this did not happen and what it means concerning the similarities and dif­ferences between Mach’s and Einstein’s thinking. The statement itself sug­gests to Hiromatsu that Einstein considered his thinking to be close to that of Mach, at least at that time, and that the obituary was not merely a formal exercise in praising the dead.

Einstein pointed out that Mach had analyzed the weak points in classical mechanics, including the concepts of space and time, indicating that strictly speaking time was abstract and could not be measured. Einstein did not state it explicitly, but Hiromatsu conjectures that he was referring to doubts held at the time concerning the possibility of successfully employing an operationist definition of time. In terms of Mach’s method, concepts were abstracted and formed into laws in such a way that concepts and laws were formed together, and it is this which constitutes the basic point in Mach’s theory of concept formation (and which entailed his rejection of absolute space and time). Mach came near to relativity theory when he pointed out in his critique of absolute motion that movement was determined with re­spect to the universe as a whole and that force was determined with respect to the entire mass of the universe. But along with an operationalist defini­tion of time, Mach needed the concept of ether and the physical fact of con­stancy of the speed of light. In addition, because Mach was not manifestly aware that the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass implied a prin­ciple of relativity, thus it was unclear whether what appeared like falling through space was caused by a gravitational field or by an accelerating frame of reference.

In later writings, Einstein began to delineate his developing differences with Mach, and once again, these differences related to epistemology. Hiro­matsu cites, for example, a 1917 letter to Besso (first mentioned by Gerald Holton), saying that Mach could destroy but not build; he could only pro­duce a catalogue, not a system. In short, Einstein rejected Mach’s pheno­menalistic physics and indeed any descriptivism based on monism, in favor of realism.[62] It was with Einstein^’s assertion of his realism that the distinc­tion which Hiromatsu draws out between Mach’s epistemological influence and ontological lack of influence becomes important in helping Zo clarify Einstein’s intellectual debt to Mach.

As suggested earlier, what Einstein gradually came to conspicuously re­ject was the epistemology of Mach. Hiromatsu observes that being influen­ced by 1-fume or Mach entails an epistemological investigation into the ori­gin of concepts, the mechanism of their formation, or their justification, and none of this contradicts any aspect of a “realistic position”. Epistemolo­gy as a type of historical investigation is compatible with either a phenome­nalistic or realist ontology. In particular, there is no inconsistency between realism and, for example, operationalist definitions. It would have been it seems quite natural for Einstein to have sympathized with Mach’s critique of Newton’s concepts of space, time, and mass if we do not assimilate real­ism to a Newtonian realism. It is possible that Einstein’s view was always at least implicitly realist from the beginning.

The first epistemological difference between Mach and Einstein comes with regard to system construction.[63] Although initially Mach and Einstein may have used the same method of system construction, it seems that with the development of the mature Einstein (post 1916) their methods became different. Hiromatsu argues that Einstein’s statement that Mach was a mere catalogue-maker is an unfair evaluation, and simply shows that Einstein’s understanding of Mach’s methods was not deep enough. Mach, Hiromatsu observes, departs from concrete facts and ends up with abstract formaliza­tions. Einstein, on the other hand, works from abstract principles to con­crete facts. Einstein considers this approach to be “deductivist”. This does not mean a formal logical deductivist system, but rather making an implicit principle of a generalized form of an empirical fact, establishing it as an explicit principle by determining its conditions of possibility, and then de­veloping from the ground up a system using this principle as a starting or initial point.

To some extent this may seem to resemble, for example, Mach’s mak­ing the impossibility of eternal motion a principle, but Mach never con­sciously traced this principle back to determine the conditions of its possi­bility. This difference in system construction was insufficiently realized by Einstein. But, Hiromatsu points out, even these methodological differences in system construction would not have prevented Mach from accepting the special theory of relativity if the constancy of the speed of light had been recognized as an experimental fact. That Mach recognized this to be a testa­ble matter, Hiromatsu notes, is demonstrated by the fact that Mach and his son conducted several experiments to try to ascertain this. Had they proven to their satisfaction that the results of the experiments showed the con­stancy of the velocity of light, Hiromatsu believes that Mach would have had no qualms about accepting special relativity as a physical theory. At any rate, whether one believes that if equipment failure or misuse could be avoided such an experiment would prove the constancy of the speed of light is a pre-theoretical affair, and cannot be used to argue for the incompatibi­lity of Mach’s philosophy with either relativity theory or its philosophical foundations.

Hiromatsu believes that Einstein oversimplified matters when he alleged that Mach in terms of his preferred methodology of science was simply a catalogue maker. Contrary to Einstein, Mach was not just noticing and re­cording what was directly given in the appearances, but doing “something more’, “something other”. Hiromatsu in the context is referring to the “as” structure of perception, that is, emphasizing that it is meaning-laden. Even the idea of “pure perception” is an intellectualization. In Hiromatsu’s epis­temology, this “something more” is intersubjectively determined and is conditioned by socio-historical factors in its formation.[64]

Mach realized that sensory appearance contained “something more”, but tried to exclude it as metaphysical. Mach was in fact half-consciously build­ing the “something more” in its intersubjectively valid aspect as a Gestalt, hinzudenken, Gedankending, or idealizieren. So were the positivists, who included Gestalten among phenomena. What Mach and the positivists wan­ted, according to Hiromatsu, was not only to avoid any wrong or mistaken Gedankending which in the received view could be passed off as the “real thing” (like Einstein’s enduring real existent), but also to replace it with the new “evidential” Gedankending, that is, in order to provide the new “some­thing more” strictly connected to evidence. Thus Mach’s phenomenalist de­scriptivism was more complicated than Einstein considered it to be. For Einstein, the “something more, something other” is the traditionally exis­tent independent of the content of consciousness, known intellectually. Fur­ther, Einstein asserted that science was the study of such “objective ele­ments”. For these ontological and disciplinary reasons, Einstein could ne­ver accept Mach’s basic views.

In any case, this “something more^” is a necessary structural moment for knowledge of description. Mach was not engaged in a mere descriptivism, as Einstein thought, and to the extent that Mack and the positivists believed that their thinking excluded a higher level ‘something more”, they fell into self-deception. But Einstein and Planck on the other hand, fell into the short-sighted error of reducing the “something more” to an “existent” in the traditional sense. Hiromatsu writes that in the end both came to grief:

 

The origin of this tragicomedy is that they did not correctly grasp the dual structure of empirically given knowledge consisting of the “directly given” and the “something more”, and the existence characteristics (what is termed Idealität) and the intersubjective validity of the latter moment. As a result, they gradually fell into a situation wherein one became an advocate of empi­rical, phenomenal descriptivism and the other became an advocate of a worn-out realistic explanationism.[65]

 

Hiromatsu feels that Einstein’s realism brought about a definition of relativity theory itself. While one cannot go so far as to say that this led to the failure of the unified field theory of later years, the assumption of a pre-ordained harmony between mathematical structure and the empirical world seems to Hiromatsu to be a poor philosophy. For Hiromatsu, Ein­stein’s realism led him to grant special privilege to the measurement of an object in its inertial frame of reference. Thus, contraction phenomena be­came “appearances” and space and time became absolute existents. This is a distortion of relativity theory. While Mach directed decisive criticism at subject/object framework epistemology and ontology, Einstein had one foot in and one foot out of it. A complete interpretation of relativity theory re­quires escaping both Machist phenomenalism and traditional realism by in­troducing a relationist ontology:

 

...the complete relativity and equivalence of observed phenomena cannot be developed by a dualistic separation of “observed object” and “observing subject” but by understanding the dialectical “interpenetration” of knower and known (more appropriately, in the aspect of a “functional relation” on the basis of an ontological view <derived from> the primacy of the relation).[66]