History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy. Translated . and Annotated by Philip E. B. Jourdain. (Frank Hyneman Knight's copy, with his signature.)

[KNIGHT, Frank Hyneman 1885-1972] MACH, Ernst (1838-1916):

Published by Chicago: Open Court/ London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1911., 1911

About this Item

First Edition in English of Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit. 116 pp; 8 figs. Original cloth. Very Good. Copy of Frank Hyneman Knight (1885-1972), with his signature on the front pastedown and many interesting pencil notes in the text and margins. 'In his first major historical work, Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit (1872), [Mach] conjectured that there is 'only one way to [scientific] enlightenment: Historical studies!' . . . The youthful considerations included in the small (fifty-eight page) Geschichte und Wurzel touched upon themes and points of view that continued to be explored by Mach for the rest of his life: the meaning and function of scientific theories, the epistemological importance of the physiology and psychology of sensation for the natural sciences in general, the principle of economy of thought, the inadequacy of Newtonian mechanics, the sterility of the atomic theory, and the sharp criticism of classical causality, physical reductionism, mechanism, materialism, and all forms of metaphysical speculation. In his historico-critical treatises on mechanics, optics, and heat theory, and in his . . . Erkenntnis und Irrtum (1905), Mach returned to these same issues' (D.S.B. VIII: 601). 'Malinowski's standing as a founder of economic anthropology rests partly on his introduction of intensive fieldwork as a method. He obtained his doctorate at Cracow with a dissertation, 'On the economy of thought', about Ernst Mach; and Mach's epistemological individualism provided the theoretical foundation of Malinowski's functionalist approach (Stocking 1995: 245). . . . Melville Herskovits published The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples (1940), a compilation of published sources aimed at drawing the attention of economists to the cumulative achievements of scientific ethnography. These systematic exercises in juxtaposing economic ideas and the results of ethnography launched economic anthropology in its modern form. . . . . If Herskovits was hoping for a dialogue between anthropologists and economists, Frank Knight, author of a pioneering book on the economics of risk (1923), quickly disabused him. Knight was sure that outsiders did not understand the principles of economics or at least his branch of it. He began by attacking Ralph Linton's puff for the book: [When] Professor Linton says: ' . . . the economic problems of 'primitive' man are essentially the same as our own and many of them can be studied even better in 'primitive' societies, because they manifest themselves in simpler form' . . . he simply doesn't know what he is talking about (Knight 1999 [1941]:108)' (thememorybank [dot] co [dot] uk/2007/11/09/a-short-history-of-economic-anthropology/).

Seller Inventory # 20961

Bibliographic Details

• Title: History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy. Translated . and Annotated by Philip E. B. Jourdain. (Frank Hyneman Knight's copy, with his signature.)
• Publisher: Chicago: Open Court/ London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1911.
• Publication Date: 1911
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)