Herbert Dingle - Collected Quotes

"A great idea invariably creates as many problems as it solves: that is a sign of its greatness." (Herbert Dingle, "Relativity for All", 1922)

"The aim of the scientist is to express, in as simple a statement as possible, the principles underlying the order and arrangement of phenomena." (Herbert Dingle, "Relativity for All", 1922) 

"The numerical side of the theory of relativity is derived from the failure of all attempts to detect the relative motion of matter and ether." (Herbert Dingle, "Relativity for All", 1922) 

"A science in its infancy is the least satisfactory, and, at the same time, the most profitable theme for a general description. It is the leas satisfactory because its conclusions - if we can call them conclusions are, at the best, little more than tentative summaries of observed facts, liable at any moment to be superseded by wider generalisations: the inconsequential playfulness of childhood has not given place to the graver consistency of mature age. It is the most profitable theme because it has not yet lost the quickening inspiration that alone can produce great things. It is in touch with the poetry and romance that go side by side with all true science. In its eyes still shines 'the light that never was on sea or land'." (Herbert Dingle, "Modern Astrophysics", 1924) 

"It is as though a star throws the whole secret history of its being into its spectrum, and we have only to learn how to read it aright in order to solve the most abstruse problems of the physical Universe." (Herbert Dingle, "Modern Astrophysics", 1924)

"Modem physics is, indeed, not unlike a ship, drawing nearer to a goal not yet in sight, but so tossed about by the buffetings of experiment and working hypothesis that the passenger scarcely knows whether he is progressing or drifting." (Herbert Dingle, "Through Science to Philosophy", 1937)

"Success in scientific theory is won, not by rigid adherence to the rules of logic, but by bold speculation which dares even to break those rules if by that means new regions of interest may be opened up." (Herbert Dingle, "Through Science to Philosophy", 1937)

"The older physicist believed in Nature and thought of himself as making experiments to see what She was like. She was there whether he could observe her or not. But the modern physicist thinks first of all of what he observes in his experiments and is not interested in anything that he cannot possibly observe. He looks for relations between his observations and ignores everything else. But he still expresses his results as though they were discoveries of the essence of Nature, because he is so used to this way of speaking that he does not realise that his discoveries no longer conform to it. When they are expressed as the characteristics of a world existing outside us and independently of us, which causes our experience by its impact on our sense organs, these discoveries require such a world to have contradictory properties. Hence, by retaining this form of expression, the physicist finds himself presenting his perfectly rational achievements as though they were nonsensical." (Herbert Dingle, "The Scientific Adventure", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1952)

"Mathematics in itself, as I say, is independent of experience. It begins with the free choice of symbols, to which are freely assigned properties, and it then proceeds to deduce the necessary rational implications of those properties." (Herbert Dingle, "Science at the Crossroads", 1972)