Hugo Dingler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hugo Albert Emil Hermann Dingler (born July 7, 1881 in Munich , † June 29, 1954 in Munich) was a German philosopher and scientific theorist .

Life

Hugo Dingler's parents initially lived in Munich. His father, Hermann Dingler , was the assistant to the botanist Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli before he took over a professorship for botany at the Aschaffenburg Forestry University . His mother, Maria Dingler b. Erlenmeyer, was the daughter of the chemist Emil Erlenmeyer .

After finishing school at the humanistic grammar school in Aschaffenburg , Hugo Dingler studied mathematics and physics at the universities of Erlangen , Göttingen and Munich, a. a. with Felix Klein , Johannes Stark and Walter Lietzmann .

After 1906 at the University of Munich in Ferdinand von Lindemann Dr. phil. had received a doctorate in mathematics, physics and astronomy, Dingler was aiming for a university career. His first habilitation application in 1910 at the Technical University of Munich failed. In 1912 he achieved his habilitation at the University of Munich with the exam topic on well-ordered quantities and dispersed quantities in general for methodology, teaching and the history of mathematics.

During his military service in World War I , Dingler took part in a one-week front mission. He gained his first teaching experience as a secondary school teacher, and initially worked as a private lecturer in mathematics, philosophy and the history of science.

In 1920 Dingler became an associate professor at the University of Munich and joined a Masonic lodge , of which he was a member until 1923. In 1932 he became professor of philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt . He also taught at the Mainz University of Education. In Darmstadt Dingler was in 1934 not quite unclear circumstances forced emeritus . An intra-university intrigue is suspected after he fired a librarian who was subordinate to him. It was alleged that Dingler was held up against a "Jew-friendly" attitude, which was justified with his book Die Kultur der Juden (Leipzig 1919) published in 1919. Restructuring and cost-saving measures were officially cited as reasons.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis , he was in 1933 a member of the SS , the Nazi Teachers Association and the National Socialist Federal lecturers . Dingler's request to join the NSDAP was not answered. He was reported because he had worn the party badge without being a party member of the NSDAP. Both anti-Jewish (open from 1912 until the end of his life) and pro-Jewish statements by Dingler are documented. In the 1930s he polemicized against the "rule of the Jews in the field of mathematics" and dealt with the "spiritual peculiarities of the Jewish race". Quarrels in 1912 with the habilitation thesis reviewer Alfred Pringsheim probably contributed to his anti-Jewish attitude . But already in 1904 Dingler had complained in the diary: "... the Jew always balances unchallenged on the old cow dung". In the previous entry in his diary concerning the 3rd International Congress of Mathematicians in Heidelberg in 1904, he noted: “It was very humiliating. An awful lot of Jews. ”He also stated that David Hilbert, as a“ non-Jew ”, let himself be laughed at by Paul Gordan and Emmy Noether for his ideas. - In 1906 Dingler wrote in his diary that “the Jews” “bugged” Hilbert and formed a wall around him.

In 1934 Dingler was given a teaching position at the University of Munich, which ended in the summer semester of 1936 after a failed reviewer battle - in which sympathizers of German physics had supported him in vain. Since the end of 1936 he was an employee of the SS Ahnenerbes . On December 17, 1936, he stated in a letter that he was delighted to “now join the Ahnenerbe as a member, with whose ideal aspirations I feel deeply connected”.

Dingler was surrounded in Munich by a circle of students and like-minded people, which was known as the Dingler Circle and whose members loyal to the regime were easily given chairs at universities. These included u. a.

This group was close to the grouping of German mathematics and German physics and, like them, criticized modern relativity, quantum theory and Hilbert's mathematics.

In 1940 he was admitted to the NSDAP at the personal instruction of Adolf Hitler, despite his former membership in a lodge . In November 1940 - after another dispute between experts and a letter to Joseph Goebbels , he received another teaching position: at the mathematics and natural sciences section of Munich University. He held this teaching post until 1945. In 1941 an entire annual issue of a scientific journal was dedicated to him.

After the Second World War , Dingler was suspended from service at the University of Munich by the Bavarian Ministry of Culture on the instructions of the US military government. His efforts to be reinstated in the Magisterium failed.

Because of his involvement during the Nazi dictatorship, the Bavarian Arbitration Chamber imposed a fine of 1,380 RM on Dingler in 1948 .

Death and aftermath

Hugo Dingler died of heart failure in Munich on June 29, 1954; his grave is in Aschaffenburg . After the Second World War he married Martha Schmitt, who came from a family of industrialists from Aschaffenburg, for the second time. His widow later did a great job preserving and disseminating his work. She founded the Hugo Dingler Foundation , which was to publish unpublished works by Dingler.

Dingler's cataloged, generally accessible estate is now the property of the non-profit Hugo-Dingler-Stiftung , Aschaffenburg, founded in 1979 , and is kept in the Hugo-Dingler archive of the Aschaffenburg court library housed in Johannisburg Palace. In addition to an extensive correspondence with numerous great minds of his time, e.g. B. with Gottlob Frege , or with Ernst Mach , a private library consisting of around four thousand volumes, which is housed in its own room. The scientific correspondence of Dingler fills 57 files, the private 33 files, and is used by historians in the research of the scientific history of the 20th century. In the past, the Hugo Dingler Foundation has sponsored the publication of a series of essays on natural philosophy and the history of science.

plant

Dingler worked on both the humanities and the natural sciences. He wrote an ethics from the National Socialist spirit and strove all his life to the basics of mathematics and physics. He developed an operationalist philosophy of constructive mathematics and so-called protophysics . The central idea is to build up the sciences with standardized actions while strictly observing the so-called principle of methodical order (adherence to a scientific sequence) developed by him in such a way that logical circularity is avoided.

Dingler is the originator of a forerunner of the so-called methodological philosophy , which strived for absolute security and clarity ( certism ). His philosophical work is considered an operationalist and pragmatic philosophy of science. Dingler influenced the contemporary directions of methodical philosophy ( Erlangen constructivism and methodical culturalism ). For protophysics , he envisaged the possibilities offered by the so-called three - plate process for the production and definition of planes through the practical activity of leveling : three surfaces of objects are alternately ground off one another. Because there are three surfaces, no hollow body can arise with this leveling. Karl Popper and Rudolf Carnap saw in him an epistemological conventionalist ; Dingler rejected this designation. The assessment of the scientific status of geometry was not a convention for Dingler, but he favored the speculative concept of unobservable absolute space introduced by Newton .

Dingler's work as a scientific theorist was characterized by a permanent opposition to modern relativity theory. He leaned in the special theory of relativity that Einstein's interpretation of the Lorentz transformation principle, and measure the instead Galilean transformation a more fundamental importance. In 1935, together with Max Steck, he attempted to derive the Lorentz transformation using the Galilei transformation. See: Critique of the theory of relativity .

The general theory of relativity developed by Albert Einstein and others was rejected as circular by Dingler. According to Dingler, the geometry that is the empirical basis of physics cannot be revised by experience itself. Dingler's assertion of the primacy of philosophy and independence from the objections arising from the theory of relativity was later repeated by Paul Lorenzen and Peter Janich .

The scientific dispute escalated into a personal feud with the main exponent of the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein , in the 1930s . While Dingler had dedicated a benevolent article in a Munich newspaper to his opponent on his 50th birthday in 1929, his displeasure soon erupted into personal animosity - up to more or less blatant polemics with anti-Jewish statements.

In contrast to the empirical approach of the 'German Physicists' in Berlin, Dingler's approach to criticism of the theory of relativity was methodical : In his view, geometry was an inevitable prerequisite a priori for any empirical measurement, since it was assumed in the measurement process. Therefore empirical results could not lead to a revision of the geometry. In addition, this would contradict a 'constructive' approach in science.

Publications

  • Ulrich Weiß (ed.): Hugo Dingler: Essays on methodology. Meiner, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 978-3-7873-0718-0 . ( limited preview ).
  • Ulrich Weiß (Ed.): Hugo Dingler - Collected Works. CD-ROM. Worm, Berlin 2004. ( table of contents )
  • Limits and goals of science , Munich 1910.
  • The foundations of natural philosophy , Leipzig 1913.
  • The culture of the Jews - a reconciliation between religion and science , Leipzig 1919.
  • The basics of physics - synthetic principles of mathematical natural philosophy , Berlin / Leipzig 1919.
  • The rigid body , in: Physikalische Zeitschrift , 21, 1920, pp. 487-492.
  • Physics and hypothesis - attempt of inductive science alongside a critical analysis of the foundations of the theory of relativity , Berlin / Leipzig 1921.
  • About the circle in the empirical foundation of geometry , in: Kant studies , 30, 1925, pp. 310-330.
  • The collapse of science and the primacy of philosophy , Munich 1926.
  • The experiment - its essence and its history , Munich 1928.
  • Metaphysics and Science of the Last , Munich 1929.
  • The system - the philosophical-rational basic system and the exact method of philosophy , Munich 1930.
  • Philosophy of Logic and Arithmetic , Munich 1931.
  • About the structure of experimental physics , in: Knowledge , 2, 1931, pp. 21–38.
  • History of natural philosophy , Berlin 1932.
  • The basics of geometry, their importance for philosophy, mathematics, physics and technology , Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke 1933.
  • Acting in the sense of the highest goal - Absolute Ethik , Munich 1935.
  • The method of physics , Munich 1938.
  • From the animal soul to the human soul - The story of the spiritual incarnation , Leipzig 1941.
  • Structure of the exact fundamental science Munich 1944, 1964² (newly published by Paul Lorenzen ; only a few dozen copies of the first edition of 1944 survived the bombing of the publishing house).
  • Outline of the methodical philosophy , Füssen 1949.
  • Storia Filosofica delle Scienza , Milano 1949.
  • The physical worldview , Meisenheim / Glan 1951 (supplements to philosophical research 4).
  • Il Metodo della Ricerca nelle Scienze , Milano 1953.
  • The seizure of the real , Munich 1955.

literature

  • Jürgen Mittelstraß : Dingler, Hugo in: ders .: Encyclopedia Philosophy and Philosophy of Science. Second edition. Volume 2, Metzler 2005 ISBN 978-3-476-02101-4 , pp. 218-220
  • Peter Janich (Ed.): Science and Life - Philosophical Justification Problems in Confrontation with Hugo Dingler. transcript, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-475-1 . (limited preview).
  • Wilhelm Krampf: The philosophy of Hugo Dingler. Munich 1955.
  • Wilhelm Krampf: Hugo Dingler - commemorative book for the 75th birthday. Munich 1956.
  • Wilhelm Krampf:  Dingler, Hugo Albert Emil Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 729 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Claudia Schorcht: Philosophy at the Bavarian Universities 1933-1945 . Harald Fischer, Erlangen 1990, ISBN 3-89131-024-2 , pp. 318-328.
  • Peter Schroeder-Heister / Gereon Wolters : The scientific estate of Hugo Dingler (1881-1954) . Directory with a bibliography of Dingler's writings. Constance 1979.
  • Bruno Thuringia : Dr. Hugo Dingler, university professor, Munich. In: Aschaffenburg yearbook for history, regional studies and art of the Lower Maing area. 3, 1956, pp. 408-411.
  • Jörg Willer : Relativity and uniqueness - Hugo Dingler's contribution to the problem of justification. Meisenheim 1973.
  • Gereon Wolters : Opportunism as a natural disposition: Hugo Dingler and the 'Third Reich' , in: Peter Janich (ed.), Developments in methodological philosophy, Frankfurt a. M. 1992, pp. 257-327.
  • Kirstin Zeyer : The methodical philosophy of Hugo Dingler and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. Hildesheim 1999. ISBN 3-487-10812-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Second updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 112.
  2. ↑ According to a verbal statement by Arthur Liebert in Belgrade in 1938, cf. Denis Silagi: meeting Hugo Dingler. In: Wilhelm Krampf (ed.): Hugo Dingler - commemorative book for the 75th birthday. Munich 1956, pp. 9-15.
  3. ↑ On p. 25 of his book Die Kultur der Juden (The Culture of the Jews) , Dingler had attributed "tremendous ethical violence" to the Jewish people, an assessment that was incompatible with National Socialist ideology and propaganda. In addition, a footnote on p. 45 in which he had suggested a spiritual affinity with Walter Rathenau and his work From coming things (Berlin 1918) was likely to arouse suspicion among the National Socialists.
  4. ↑ Eckart Menzler-Trott : Gentzens Problem. Mathematical Logic in National Socialist Germany. Birkhäuser, Basel 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6574-9 . This behavior is interpreted by Gereon Wolters ( opportunism as a natural disposition: Hugo Dingler and the “Third Reich”. In: Peter Janich (ed.): Developments in methodological philosophy. Frankfurt a. M. 1992, p. 270) as opportunism .
  5. ^ Hugo Dingler: Memorandum concerning: The rule of the Jews in the field of mathematics. 1933
  6. ↑ In 1936 he submitted a manuscript with the title Die Seelische Eigenart der Jewish Rasse - A Biological-Psychological Investigation to no avail for publication.
  7. ^ Gereon Wolters : Opportunism as a natural system: Hugo Dingler and the "Third Reich". In: Peter Janich (Ed.): Developments in methodological philosophy. Frankfurt a. M. 1992, p. 270.
  8. ^ A b Gereon Wolters: Opportunism as a natural asset: Hugo Dingler and the "Third Reich". P. 273
  9. ↑ Ulrich Weiß : The other side of the coin - the “irrational” in relation to Hugo Dingler's methodology. In: Peter Janich (Ed.): Developments in methodological philosophy. Frankfurt a. M. 1992, ISBN 3-518-28579-3 .
  10. ↑ Ulrich Weiß : Hugo Dingler, National Socialism and Judaism. In: Peter Janich (Ed.): Science and Life - Philosophical Justification Problems in Confrontation with Hugo Dingler. Bielefeld 2006, pp. 235-266.
  11. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Fischer Paperback, 2005, p. 112.
  12. ↑ Disease expert with work in concentration camps; Author: At the abyss of relativism. Berlin 1941.
  13. ↑ Sommerfeld calls Müller “the worst conceivable successor”, s. Freddy Litten: Mechanics and Anti-Semitism, Wilhelm Müller (1880–1968). 2000.
  14. ↑ Bruno Thüring: (1941) "Albert Einstein's attempt to overthrow physics and its inner possibilities and causes", research on the Jewish question. No. 4, 1941 pp. 134-162.
  15. ^ Journal for the whole of natural science. No. 7, 1941.
  16. ↑ Max Steck: The main problem of mathematics. Berlin 1942
  17. ↑ Hugo Dingler: Max Planck and the foundation of so-called modern theoretical physics. Berlin 1939.
  18. ↑ Eckart Menzler-Trott: Gentzens Problem. Mathematical Logic in National Socialist Germany. Basel 2001, about p. 121.
  19. ^ Gereon Wolters: Opportunism as a natural system: Hugo Dingler and the "Third Reich". In: Peter Janich (Ed.): Developments in methodological philosophy. Frankfurt a. M. 1992, p. 319 ff
  20. ^ Journal for the whole of natural science. No. 7, 1941
  21. ↑ a b Peter Schroeder-Heister: Bibliography Hugo Dingler (1881–1954) . In: Journal for Philosophical Research , Volume 35, 1981, pp. 283-298.
  22. ^ Gottlob Frege : Scientific correspondence . Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1976, pp. 29–45 (restricted preview)
  23. ↑ Paolo Mancosu: The Adventure of Reason - Interplay between Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Logic, 1500-1940 . Oxford University Press, 2010, footnote on p. 159 (limited preview).
  24. ↑ Susan Splinter (ed.): Physica et historia: Festschrift for Andreas Kleinert for his 65th birthday . Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2005 (= Acta historica Leopoldina series , No. 45), ISBN 3-8047-2259-8 , p. 458.
  25. ^ Klaus Hentschel : Physics and National Socialism - An Anthology of Primary Sources . Birkhäuser Verlag, 2011 (reprint of the 1996 edition) ( limited preview ).
  26. ↑ Ulrich Weiß : Hugo Dingler's methodical philosophy: a critical reconstruction of its voluntaristic-pragmatic justification context . BI Wissenschaftsverlag, Mannheim 1991, ISBN 3-411-14431-9 , 514 pages.
  27. ↑ Kirstin Zeyer : The methodical philosophy of Hugo Dingler and the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 1999, ISBN 9783487108124 , 165 pages.
  28. ↑ Wolfgang Schonefeld: Protophysics and Special Theory of Relativity . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999 ( limited preview ).
  29. ^ Gerhard Schlosser and Michael Weingarten: Forms of explanation in biology . Publishing house for science and education, Berlin 2002, 253 pages.
  30. ^ Marianne Scholz: Matthias Jacob Schleiden in Tartu (Dorpat) 1863–1864: disputes, intrigues, backgrounds . The Blue Owl Publishing House, Essen 2003.
  31. ^ Hugo Dingler, Collected Works . Works on CD-ROM, edited by Ulrich Weiß with the collaboration of Silke Jeltsch and Thomas Mohrs, CD-ROM-Verlag, Berlin 2004. ( Description of the CD-ROM, with online reading samples )
  32. ↑ Helmut Pult: Axiomatics and Empiricism: a historical study of the history of science on mathematical natural philosophy from Newton to Neumann . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, 502 pages.
  33. ↑ Ingrid Kästner and Regine Pfrepper (eds.): Germans in the Tsarist Empire and Russians in Germany - natural scientists, scholars, doctors and scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries . Lectures of the symposium on August 26th and 27th, 2004 at the Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine and Natural Sciences, Medical Faculty of the University of Leipzig. Shaker Verlag, Herzogenrath 2005.
  34. ↑ Peter Janich (ed.): Science and life. Philosophical justification problems in discussion with Hugo Dingler. transript, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-475-1 . ( E-copy )
  35. ↑ so: Helmut Heiber, University under the swastika part 2 according to: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Second updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 112
  36. ↑ Hugo Dingler, Essays on Methodology , Hamburg 1987 (edited by Ulrich Weiß)
  37. ^ Peter Janich, Culture and Method - Philosophy in a Scientific World , Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 165–168.
  38. ^ Hugo Dingler, Articles on the Knowledge of the Infinitesimal Deformation of a Surface (Dissertation, Amorbach 1907)
  39. ↑ “For example, the aim of science can be seen as the production of a theory that is as secure as possible; yes, maybe even the establishment of an absolutely secure teaching. Anyone attempting such goals must see the development of physics since the turn of the century as a collapse of science. One can easily defend oneself against such a collapse with methodological decisions; one decides to hold on to a certain system that has been marked as useful and simple under all circumstances and only to supplement it with auxiliary hypotheses if necessary. That is roughly Dingler's conventionalism. ”(Karl Popper: Die Zwei Grundprobleme der Epnistheorie. 2nd edition. Ed. Von Troels Eggers Hansen, Tübingen 1994, ISBN 3-16-145774-9 , p. 394.)
  40. ↑ Hugo Dingler, “The problem of absolute space. In historical-critical treatment. ”, Yearbook of Radioactivity and Electronics 19 , No. 3, 165–214 (1922).
  41. ↑ Hugo Dingler and Max Steck (1935) “The Lorentz Transformation as an Element of Classical Physics”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 36 , 46–50.
  42. ^ Hugo Dingler, Critical Remarks on the Basics of Relativity (Lecture held at the 85th Meeting of German Natural Scientists and Doctors, first published in Physikalische Zeitschrift 21 , 668–675, 1920), Leipzig 1921.
  43. ^ Hugo Dingler, Theory of Relativity and Economic Principle , Leipzig 1922.
  44. ^ Hugo Dingler (1925) “Bilanz der Relativitätstheorie”, Süddeutsche Monatshefte 23 , No. 3, 210–218, December.
  45. ↑ Hugo Dingler, The Basics of Applied Geometry - A Study of the Relationship Between Theory and Experience in Exact Science , Leipzig 1911.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Dingler, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dingler, Hugo Albert Emil Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher and science theorist
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1954
Place of death Munich