Philosophical Interpretation of Science

Abstract

IN reviews and articles that have appeared over the name of Prof. Dingle in NATURE, a particular philosophical point of view has been presented as if it were one to which scientific men must necessarily subscribe. In his review of Eddington's “New Pathways in Science” in NATURE of March 23, p. 451, for example, it is again explicitly stated, and although I am at one with him in many of his criticisms of that book, I am certain I speak not for myself alone when I dissent strongly from Dingle's philosophical outlook on science. “We start with experience,” he says, “pick out those elements which are common to all observers, represent them by concepts defined in such a way thatthey relate together as many as possible of the common experiences, and the resulting logical network is the external world“.