By insisting on the mechanistic viewpoint, the Mechanical School in fact could not follow materialism to its logical conclusion. When a series of new experiments ant the turn of the century sharply contradicted the old theories, the Mechanical School opposed the new discoveries and tried to patch up the old theories rather than rigorously adhering to experimental facts and positively attempting to reform physics. Thus they consciously or unconsciously diverged from the materialist empiricism which is the heritage of natural scientists.
The Mechanical School forgot the everyday worldly origin of the basic concepts and principles within the framework of classical theory. Excluding them from the domain of experience, they placed them on a visionary, a priori peak and claimed them to be sacred and inviolable treasures. In essence, they slipped into a priorism. Under the domination of such an ideology, of course the Mechanical School could not adjust to the development of physics and become reformist.
Strangely enough, it was the Critical School which truly applied the philosophy of empiricism. Although they philosophically gave an opaque and sometimes idealistic explanation of the term ‘experience,’ in scientific practice they insisted on adhering to experimental facts. In The Science of Mechanics, Mach repeatedly emphasized that the essence of nature must not be fabricated by relying on self-evident assumptions. Rather, it should be derived from experience. He pointed out,
Mechanical laws are in fact very complicated, even though they seem very simple on the surface. These laws stop at a stage of incomplete experience and, indeed, can never be completed. They should never be regarded as mathematically determined truths but rather as formulae which not only can be permanently dominated by experience but also need to be so dominated.35
Mechanical principles “cannot be and have never been accepted without being pre-tested by practice. No one can be sure that these principles can be applied to domains which lie outside our experience. In fact, such expansion is useless.”36 Based on his empirical philosophy, Mach examined the basic concepts of Newtonian mechanics one by one. As Einstein later noted, he “pulled them down from their a priori Olympus,” exposed “their worldly origin,” and liberated them “from enforced taboos.”37 Mach’s critical opinions on mechanics led to a heated debate concerning the scientific, historical, and philosophical foundations of classical mechanics and classical physics which exerted a lasting and profound influence.
Poincare was also a steadfast empiricist. He insisted, “Experiment is the only source of truth. It alone can teach us anything new; it alone can give us certainty. These are two points that can not be questioned.”38 To Poincare, “all laws are therefore deduced from experiment…Explanations of the universe which are based on unsophisticated assumptions rather than experiment are only illusions.”39 Dominated by this empirical philosophy, when Poincare confronted the sharp conflict between the new experiments and the old theories, he always tried to reform physics by beginning with the new experimental facts and historical experience, while affirming the inherent value of the old theories. He did not “cut the feet to fit the shoes” by forcing new observations into the domain of the old classical theories, nor did he doubt everything and fall into pessimistic despair. Led by his empirical philosophy, he publicly revised his mistakes and abandoned his reservations concerning atomic and quantum theory.
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