Hugo Dingler was a German scientist and philosopher who studied the fundamental problems of mathematics and physics.
Background
Hugo Dingler was born on July 7, 1881 in Munich, Germany. His mother was Maria Erlenmeyer, the daughter of the famous chemist Emil Erlenmeyer; his father, Hermann Dingler, was a professor of botany at the University of Würzburg and a noted scholar.
Education
Dingler passed his Matura (school-leaving examination) at the Humanistische Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg and then studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy at Erlangen, Göttingen, and Munich. Among his teachers were David Hilbert, Felix Klein, Edmund Husserl, Hermann Minkowski, Wilhelm Roentgen, and Woldemar Voigt. While still a student Dingler, stimulated by John Stuart Mill’s Logic, had encountered the problem of the validity of axioms, which was to concern him throughout his life.
Dingler received his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy in 1906.
Dingler qualified as lecturer in 1912 at the Technische Hochschule in Munich. In 1920 he became an assistant professor at the University of Munich and remained there until 1932, when he accepted a position at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt; two years later he was dismissed from the latter on ideological grounds. Dingler could, however, continue his scientific work and have it published; and in 1935 he participated in a scientific conference at Lund in Sweden, where he gave well-attended lectures and seminars. Difficulties during the Third Reich and privations and adversity after its collapse permanently weakened his health, and in 1954 he succumbed to a heart ailment.
In numerous publications Dingler presented this foundation for the exact sciences, as he had done for geometry and mechanics in Das Experiment. He also derived their axioms and completed them. In the posthumous Aufhau der exakten Fundamental-wissenschaften (1964) he brought the foundation of arithmetic and geometry from the preaxiomatic, original basis to the fully established science. In addition, he was convinced that his method was applicable in all other fields, including biology (especially evolution), the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and ethics.
In 1943 he wrote an introduction to a collection edited by Gerhard Heberer, Die Evolution der Organismen, which was praised as an original accomplishment by Max Hartmann and also appeared in the second edition of the work (1959). In this work Dingler introduced, completely within his system of pure synthesis, a demonstration of the fact of evolution. In 1932 he outlined a theory of the factors of evolution that later was supported experimentally.
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.
Views
Dingler’s fundamental investigations were concerned exclusively with the logical and methodological aspect of exact research. He called for a reconstruction of the foundations and the elimination of every presupposition in order to be able really to give an ultimate foundation even to the axioms themselves.
Dingler followed new paths, building on the ideas of Pierre Duhem, in the concept of the experiment. He wished to refute the belief, which had brought about the dominance of experiment, that one could arrive at general laws of nature through induction.
For Dingler an experiment is a willed, intentional action. The geometrical forms, which enter into the measuring apparatus and the measurements required in experiment, are produced according to a priori ideas, their properties being determined from within by the definition of the structure. Dingler speaks of “productive or definitional a priori,” which relates to the primary, real world; this differs from Kant’s a priori, which refers only to appearances.
Dingler’s attitude toward non-Euclidean geometry, the theory of relativity, and quantum physics has frequently been misunderstood. In his view only a single, completely determined geometry was demonstrable and demonstrated as a fully defined fundamental science: Euclidean geometry. Nevertheless, non-Euclidean geometries were of great importance in terms of method.
In one respect Dingler completely opposed the theory of relativity and quantum physics: the theory of relativity operates in the field of number tables, which are furnished by experiment and within the framework of which any intellectual considerations are permissible. The results of experimental measurements (Zahlenwolke) are the domain of theoretical physics, which is obliged further to combine formulas, suggest new experiments, and predict new results. Quantum physics (Feingehiet) is therefore open to any theoretical train of thought, but cannot yet be made accessible through measurement and experiment. Thus, physicists should renounce ontological explanations of their mathematical results.
In biology Dingler concerned himself especially with problems of evolution and firmly opposed the vitalistic theses that frequently appeared in philosophical circles.
Membership
Dingler was a member of the International Academy of the History of Science.
Personality
Dingler was an independent, self-willed thinker, one who cannot be classified among those who followed any of the contemporary tendencies, although some influences, especially of Husserl and Henri Poincare, can be ascertained. He designated himself an antiempiricist and considered himself as holding a position much like Kant’s.
Relative to the extent of his total work, Dingler paid little attention to logic and rejected the claim that classical logic could be demonstrated by mathematical logic.
Dingler, whose thinking was close to the operationalism of P. W. Bridgman, founded no school but nevertheless had a group of followers scattered far beyond Germany. He did not wish to erect a total system, although he occasionally took a position on ethical and religious problems. His concern, as he states in the foreword to his most famous work, Der Zusammenbruch, was to help to achieve the “old, great Greek idea of the unity of the mind.”
Connections
Dingler's first wife was Maria Stach von Golzheim, by whom he had one daughter; his second wife was Martha Schmitt.