Knowledge and Error Quotes

“Above all there is no Machist philosophy. At most [there is] a scientific methodology and a psychology of knowledge [Erkenntnispsychologie]; and like all scientific theories both are provisional and imperfect efforts. I am not responsible for the philosophy which can be constructed from these with the help of extraneous ingredients….The land of the transcendental is closed to me. And if I make the open confession that its inhabitants are not able at all to excite my curiosity, then you may estimate the wide abyss that exists between me and many philosophers. For this reason I already have declared explicitly that I am by no means a philosopher, but only a scientist. If nevertheless occasionally, and in a somewhat noisy way, I have been listed among the former then I am not responsible for this. Of course, I also do not want to be a scientist who blindly entrusts himself to the guidance of a single philosopher in the way that Moliere’s physician I expected and demanded of his patients.”
― Ernst Mach, Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry