Against Machism
Channel: Paul Cockshott
Date: 2021-10-14

Mach was the most significant opponent of materialism in the late 19th century. This examines why his arguments were wrong even then, and how Einstein's papers in 1905 defeated Mach's position on the non-existence of atoms. WARNING I make an arithmetic error in calculating the energy of the Leyden jars I used charge* v^2 instead of capacitance * v^2 in my calculation, so figures should be 0.1 Joule and 0.5 Joule respectively. Silly error.