Ernst Mach
1
8.7
- proper noun
- Ernst Mach made significant contributions to both physics and philosophy in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Examples
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The concept of the Mach number is named after Ernst Mach.
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Many philosophers consider Ernst Mach's work foundational to the development of logical positivism.
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Ernst Mach was a pioneer in the field of physics.
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Did Ernst Mach influence the development of logical positivism?
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Ernst Mach made significant contributions to both physics and philosophy in the late 19th and early 20th century.
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Many philosophers consider Ernst Mach's work foundational to the development of logical positivism.
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The concept of the Mach number is named after Ernst Mach.
Synonyms
1
9.9
An Austrian scientist and philosopher who studied how we know things and the speed of sound
Surface Forms
Morphology
Ernst + Mach
This is a personal name referring to a specific historical individual; the biographical meaning (‘Austrian physicist and philosopher…’) cannot be derived from the constituent tokens 'Ernst' and 'Mach' because they are proper names rather than compositional lexical items. Proper names do not transparently signal profession or biography to a B1 learner, so the expression is idiomatic/identity-based rather than predictable from its parts.
Etymology
Ernst Mach was an Austrian scientist and thinker in the late 1800s who studied motion and how people sense the world. Because he worked on speed and measurement, engineers named the 'Mach number' after him to compare an object's speed with the speed of sound, and philosophers remember him for ideas that helped start 'logical positivism'.