Albert Einstein on The Science of Mechanics

“My attention was drawn to Ernst Mach's Science of Mechanics by my friend Besso while a student, around the year 1897. The book exerted a deep and persisting impression upon me... owing to its physical orientation toward fundamental concepts and fundamental laws.”

“We must not be surprised... that... all physicists of the last century saw in classical mechanics a firm and final foundation for all of physics, yes, indeed, for all natural science, and that they never grew tired in their attempts to base Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, which, in the meantime, was slowly beginning to win out, upon mechanics as well. Even Maxwell and H. Hertz, who in retrospect appear as those who demolished the faith in mechanics as the final basis of all physical thinking, in their conscious thinking adhered throughout to mechanics as the secure basis of physics. It was Ernst Mach who, in his History of Mechanics, shook this dogmatic faith; this book exercised a profound influence upon me in this regard while I was a student. I see Mach's greatness in his incorruptible skepticism and independence; in my younger years, however, Mach's epistemological position also influenced me very greatly, a position which today appears to be essentially untenable.”