JF Ptak Science Books  [Extending Post 1813]

I cannot think of another illustration by a scientist or philosopher who attempts to explain their own, literal, view of the world and then offer what this looks like to the reader from inside his own head, looking out through his own eye.  That’s exactly what Ernst Mach is doing right here on page 15 of his influential book Die Analyse der Empfindungen,  the fourth German edition (“The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical”, published in Jena in 1903).

There is nothing in this world for Mach that is not admissible to the human brain that is not empirically verifiable–that is, the world is nothing but awash in sensation and that sensation itself forms part of the experience of, well, experience. I’ve actually never been interested in the philosophy of science, and this is one of the reasons why.  Nevertheless I boldly break through my own prejudices to enjoy this phenomenally original image, drawn from the inside of Mach’s working mind, looking out through his eye socket, over his mustache, under his eyebrow, around his nose, out across his body and then leaping into the rest of the world.  I think he does make his point about the essential.

Another interesting perspective is achieved by the one-and-only Fritz Kahn in 1926 with his imagery of viewing the world from deep within a human nostril. 

This is a different sort of interpretation (from his Das Leben des Menschen/”The Life of Man”, printed in Stuttgart in 1931, volume 5, and found at the National Library of Medicine site section “Dream Anatomies” here https://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy/da_g_IV-A-06.html) from the Machian view,  Dr. Kahn’s (1888-1968, a gynecologist and a renowned popular science communicator) being more of a landscape with the solar apogee of the nostril opening to the outside world. 

And similar in a way to the Mach’s internal view of the outside world is this classic Saul Steinberg New Yorker cartoon of the world view of the New Yorker (and of course this includes only Manhattan). I know some number of people who have transposed their bodies much like Herr Mach into the Steinberg map–except that their worldview ends basically at the Hudson River (Mach’s feet) with the rest of the world being the sliver out there beyond the river (Mach’s window) until you go 359 degrees around the world to get back to the East River (and back inside Mach’s noggin).  It is an unusual world view to have, but someone has to have it so that we can at least identify it so. 

I just like the picture. 

Notes