Hugo Dingler

Hugo Albert Emil Hermann Dingler (* July 7 1881 Munich, Germany; June 29 1954 Munich, Germany. Son of Hermann and Maria Dingler). Dingler was a German scientist and philosopher.

Life

Hugo Dingler studied mathematics, philosophy, and physics with Edmund Husserl, Felix Klein, Hermann Minkowski, David Hilbert, Wilhem Roentgen. and Woldemar Voigt at the universities of Erlangen, Göttingen, and Munich. He graduated from the University of Munich with a thesis under Aurel Voss. He failed to get a Privatdozent position in mathematics at Munich, but was given a position to teach "Methods, Teaching and History of Mathematics." Thus Dingler turned from mathematics to philosophy of science.

In 1934 Dingler was dismissed from his teaching position. He told several interviewers that this was because of his favorable writings concerning Jews. In fact he was dismissed as part of a general retrenchment and not at this time for political reasons. Later his reinstatement was opposed for political reasons, but by 1940 he had joined the Nazi Party and was given a teaching position. Of Dingler's 1944 book "Lehrbuch der Exakten Naturwissenschaften" only thirty copies survived wartime bombing.

Doctrines

Dingler's position is usually characterized as "conventionalist" by Karl Popper and others. Sometimes he is called a "radical conventionalist", as by the early Rudolf Carnap. Dingler himself initially characterized it as "critical conventionalism" to contrast it with the "naïve conventionalism" of other philosophers such as Poincaré, but he himself later ceased to call his position conventionalist. Dingler agrees with the conventionalists that the fundamental assumptions of geometry and physics are not extracted empirically and cannot be given a transcendental deduction. However, Dingler disagrees with conventionalists such as Henri Poincaré in that he does not believe there is freedom to choose alternative assumptions. Dingler believes that one can give a foundation to mathematics and physics by means of operations as building stones. Dingler claims that this operational analysis leads one to Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics, which are the only possible results.

Dingler opposed Einstein's relativity theory and was therefore opposed and snubbed by most of the leaders of the German physics and mathematics community. This opposition, at least to the theory of general relativity remains in the work of his follower Paul Lorenzen.

Influence

Paul Lorenzen, noted for his work on constructive foundations of mathematics was a follower of Dingler, at least with respect to the foundations of geometry and physics. The so-called Erlangen School of followers and allies of Lorenzen, including Kuno Lorenz, Wilhelm Kamlah, and Peter Janich, and more indirectly, Juergen Mittelstrass, is thus in large part pursuing a modernized version of Dingler's program which claims to incorporate relativity, quantum theory and quantum logic.

Works

*"Beitrage zur Kenntnis der infinitesimalen Deformation einer Flaeche", Amorbach, 1907, thesis directed by Aurel Voss.
*"Grundlinean einer Kritik und exakten Therie der Wissenschften", 1907.
*"Kritische Bemerkungen zu den Grundlagen der Relativitaetstheorie," "Physikalische Zeitschrift"vol 21, (1920), 668-675. Reissued as pamphlet, Leipzig, 1921.
*"Metphysik als Wisenschaft under Primat der Philosophie", Munich, 1926.
*"Philosophie der Logik und Arithmetik", Munich, 1931.
*"Geschichte der Naturphilosophie", Berlin, 1932.
*"Die Grundlagen der Geometrie", Stuttgart, 1933.
*"Das System", Munich 1933
*"Das Handlen im Sinne des hoechsten Zieles"Munich, 1935
*"Die Method der Physik, Munich", 1938.
*"Vom Tierseele zur Menschenseele", 1941, Leipzig.
*"Lehrbuch der Exakten Naturwissenschaften", Berlin, 1944. edited posthumously by Paul Lorenzen as "Aufbau der Fundamentalwissenschaften", Munich, 1964.
*"Grundriss der methodischen Philosophie", Fuessen, 1949
*"Ergreifung des Wirklichen", Munich 1955. Reprinted, with intro. by Kuno Lorenz and Juergen Mittelstrass, Frankfurt, 1969.

About Dingler

*Ceccato, Silvia, Silvio, "Contra-Dingler, pro Dingler" "Methodos", Vol. 4 (1952) English transl. 266-290, and Dinger, reply, 297-299.
*Toretti, Roberto,"Hugo Dingler's Philosophy of Geometry," Dialogos, vol. 32, (1978), 85-118.
*Wolters, Gereon, "The First Man Who Almost Wholly Understands Me: Carnap, Dingler, and Conventionalism," in Nicholas Rescher, ed., *"The Heritage of Logical Positivism",Lantham MD: University Press of America, 1985, 93-107. Karl Friedrich von Wiezaecker, "Geometrie und Physik," in C. P. Enz and Jagdish Mehra, eds., "Physical Reality and Mathematical Description", Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974, esp. 60-63.