Talk:Herbert Dingle/Draft revision

Herbert Dingle was a 20th century physicist, philosopher and historian of science, author of scientific books, and an untiring critic of science and scientific method. He is best known for his criticism of the special theory of relativity, stemming from controversies over the twins paradox in the 1950s, and his book Science At The Crossroads. He is most famous for his assertion that the special theory of relativity contains a logical inconsistency which invalidates it.

Life

Dingle was born in London August 2, 1890, of Cornish ancestry. He was raised in Plymouth by his mother, who moved there following the death of his father. He left school at age fourteen in order to work, but he continued his studies at night. In 1915 at age 24, he won a Royal Scholarship for physics at Imperial College, London. He was appointed to the department staff there prior to his graduation in 1918, and remained at Imperial College for many more years. Upon graduation he was married to Alice Westacott. They had one son. Both died before Dingle, who died in Hull on September 4, 1978 shortly after his 88 birthday.

Academic Life

Dingle was an academic by profession. He trained to be a physicist, and worked in the field of spectroscopy. At imperial College he worked in the department where Norman Lockyer had been section head, followed by Alfred Flower. Dingle became spectroscopy section head in 1935. In 1937 he was appointed to a chair in natural philosophy. During the second world war, Dingle took responsibility for running of the physics department in the absence of its formal leader. In 1946 , Dingle left Imperial College to take the position of Professor and head of the history and philosophy of science department at University College, London. He remained there until he retired in 1955.

As a result of his spectroscopy work, he was elected president of The Royal Astronomical Society in 1951, serving until 1953. He was President of the History of Astronomy Comission of the International astronomical Union. (More to be added here)

Professional Work

Dingle’s professional work can be divided into three areas: spectroscopy and astrophysics, natural philosophy, and relativity. In the case of relativity, his most famous work occurred after his retirement.

Spectroscopy and Astrophysics need To Add Natural Philosophy need to add Special Relativity

Dingle tells us that he studued natural philosophy under Alferd North Whitehead. It was Whitehead who persuaded him that relativity was valid. In 1922 he published his first relativity book Relativity For All. It was a popular exposition that appeared at the height of popular interest in relativity following the eclipse expedition of 1918 which declared that the theory had been proven. In 1940, Dingle published his second relativity book titled, The Special Theory Of relativity. This was an intermediate level textbook to introduce relativity to college students. His third and last book Science At The Crossroads book appeared in 1971. It documents his challenge to the relativity establishment regarding his claims of an inconsistency in the theory and the methods used to suppress his view, without answering the challenge to prove that his claims were false.

Special Relativity Controversies

Dingle’s claim of an inconsistency in the special theory of relativity occurred after many years of controversy were already behind him. The first controversy erupted in 1939 when he published a paper in Nature which asserted that it was not correct to state that according to relativity moving clocks run slow. His argument was based on his discovery of a mathematical demonstration that there were clocks that did not obey this claim. He was subsequently attacked for this claim and a bitter exchange of letters occurred in the pages of Nature. The essence of the controversy was the claim by Dingle’s critics that his demonstration did not use a legitimate clock and therefore was invalid. Dingle resisted this assertion and stuck to his claim. He asserted that the claim of relativity should be changed to assert that it was the time scale of physics that was changed by relative motion and not the rate of a clock. He asserted that this did not invalidate relativity, but that it showed a need to correct the calibration of clocks that did not obey the time transformation law of relativity.

In 1940 the controversy was revived by Paul Epstein who used it as an opportunity to criticise Dingle’s book the special theory of relativity. Another acrimonious exchange of letters occurred, but this time in the American Journal Of Physics. The issues of the previous debate were revisited by Epstein who added an additional major criticism of Dingle‘s book, that it did not teach the operational method. The issues discussed included the adequacy of the operational method, the reality of the Lorentz contraction, and the legitimacy of Dingle’s clocks. Eventually Einstein’s protégé, Leopold Infeld, published a paper which appeared to resolved the dispute by asserting his agreement with Paul Epstein. However, none of the disputed issues were actually resolved.

In 1955 Dingle precipitated the most famous of his controversies when he objected to a statement made in a book 'The Foreseeable Future' regarding the famous twins paradox. The ensuing controversy was one of the most famous disputes in 20th century physics, which culminated in an exchange between Dingle and Prof. William H. McCrea in the Journal Nature in 1967. The controversy caused Dingle to investigate the mathematical and physical foundations of the special theory of relativity and this caused him to doubt its validity. Eventually he discovered mathematical demonstrations which he interpreted as proof of flaws in or inconsistencies in the theory. The debate and discussion of these eventually led him to disown relativity as a valid scientific theory and his long, but ultimately unsuccesful, campaign to establish his refutation of relativity as scientifically valid remained his main goal for the rest of his life.

External links

• "Science at the Crossroads" by Herbert Dingle.
• "Challenging Einstein's Special Relativity: Herbert Dingle — Science at the Crossroads" This article links two PDF files: The body and the appendices of Herbert Dingle's book "Science at the Crossroads".
• "Cosmology: Methodological Debates in the 1930s and 1940s"from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "Symmetrical Experiments to Test the Clock Paradox (PDF file)" Published in Physics and Modern Topics in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering 1999.