The Analysis of Sensations

Introduction

First published in 1886 as Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen and later much expanded as Die Analyse der Empfindungen, the book combines the physiology and psychology of the senses with Mach’s anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge. Its opening chapter argues that the world consists of “elements” – colours, sounds, pressures, spaces, times – that are in themselves neither physical nor mental; they count as one or the other depending on which relations are being studied. Bodies and the self are only relatively stable complexes of these elements. The book influenced Viennese writers such as Hermann Bahr and Robert Musil, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Mach.

Connections

Taken up in

• On Gestalt Qualities1890 · Christian von Ehrenfels

More works by Ernst Mach

• 1883The Science of Mechanics