Talk:Herbert Dingle

Reasons for Disagreeing with GregVolk's Dec24 Edits
In GregVolk's edits two well-documented facts are suppressed. First, that Dingle initially claimed relativity didn't predict unequal aging for round-trip twins and then acknowledged he had been wrong about that (and had been wrong for 40 years) and then switched to claiming that relativity was logically inconsistent. Dingle himself says admits this in his writing. This is not a contraversial point. There is no reason to suppress this important fact. Second, the fact that abundant experimental evidence supports the predictions of special relativity. Honestly, if it isn't even permissible in a Wikipedia article to state that special relativity has been experimentally verified, then we might as well just pack it in. I do, however, I agree with GregVolk that the summary of Dingle's work in the beginning of the article should mention Crossroads, so I may put that edit back in. I think it was previously assumed that this book was adequately covered under "Controveries".Denveron (talk) 00:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I neglected to address one other part of GregVolk's edits that I don't agree with. GV wants the article to just say that someone (Whitrow) argued that the manifest reciprocity of the Lorentz transformation is not logically inconsistent. The article was written the way it is just because Whitrow was a convenient person to attribute that to, and some editors insisted on having a source that specifically refers to Dingle (rather than to the technical point at issue, for which there are literally thousands of solid references). There is no dispute about the fallacy of Dingle's claim. Even anti-relativists know that he was trivially wrong about that. In fact, the current article is written as charitably as can be, even at the expense of accuracy, because the reader isn't given any sense of just HOW absurdly wrong Dingle was. If some editors insist, we can pile up references, showing the near universal agreement on this point, but it sure seems like wasted effort because we all know the ultimate outcome.Denveron (talk) 00:32, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I note that you reverted the editors stylistic changes as well as those which changed the tone of certain sections. I fail to see how the two are connected?  If you feel that such stylistic changes were detrimental, please state why.
 * In any case, the only part of the edit I feel strongly about is the use of "relatvists argue" and simliar phrases.  --Starwed (talk) 13:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know what "stylistic changes" you are referring to. I explained my reasons (above) for objecting to each of GV's proposed changes. If there are more specific change(s) that I failed to address, I'd be happy to do so if you can point them out.Denveron (talk) 07:04, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced Statements Appearing In this Article
The following statement apears as a conclusive statement although it is unsourced. Please supply a source or remove it. "However, most modern cosmologists subsequently accepted the validity of the hypothetico-deductive method of Milne." I doubt this is correct. In fact it is not clear what it means.


 * Two reputable reference sources have now been added to the article, demonstrating the verifiability of that statement.63.24.97.207 (talk) 02:22, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

The following statement does not appear in the cited paper and misrepresents what is said in that paper. I think what when you attribute a conclusion to a source you should accurately report what has been said in that source. This is not exactly what appears there and it misinterprets what is said in the source.
 * "The Lorentz transformation is x'=(x−vt)β, t'=(t−vx/c2)β, and its algebraic inverse is x=(x'+vt')β, t=(t'+vx'/c2)β, where β=1/√(1−v2/c2). These equations imply t'=βt at x=0, and t=βt' at x'=0. Dingle alleged that these two facts are mutually contradictory, because the first implies t'/t =β and the second implies t/t'=β. However, these ratios apply to two different conditions, namely, x=0 and x'=0 respectively. Hence, contrary to Dingle's assertion, there is no contradiction, nor are these relations merely "appearances". They are the actual ratios of the inertial time coordinates along two different directions in space-time."


 * This footnote is a summary of the fallacy of Dingle's argument, as is explained numerous sources, including (but not limited to) Whitrow's obituary and many of the replies to Dingle in various publications, including (but not limited to) McRae's. There is no misrepresentation. The explanation summarized in this footnote is described in all these sources, and is perfectly accurate and representative of those sources.63.24.97.207 (talk) 02:22, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Reference 13 is used improperly as it refers to a different dispute than the one it is supposed to refer to. The editors apparently don't understand anything about the controversies they are reporting on and mix them up in the references. This is so they can provide a lot of sources that seem to support their position. The following statement refers to the twins paradox dispute and not to the time dilation dispute.
 * For example, Dingle wrote in a Letter to Nature in 1957 "Dr. Frank S. Crawford's further communication is welcome as the first attempt to answer my arguments. Hitherto they have been ignored, and independent reasons, which I reject, have been adduced for the opposite conclusion." Sixteen years later he wrote wearily, "It would be profitless to deal separately with the latest "answers" to my question; their diversity tells its own tale, and the writers may see their misjudgments corrected in my book"


 * Two general "controversies" are summarized in the article, the first on the methodology of cosmology, and the second on the twins paradox and time dilation. The issue of the twins paradox is nothing other than the issue of time dilation. None of the reputable references splits up Dingle's complaints aginst the twins paradox from his complaints about time dilation. Dingle's failure to understand time dilation was the reason he failed to understand the twins paradox. These do not constitute two disputes, but only one.

At the end of the article there appears a conclusion that is given the appearance that it is drawn from sources. The conclusion tries to state Dingle is wrong. One of the sources cited is reference 17 and it states the following:
 * See also the earlier literature on the twin paradox, for example, Lorentz, H. A., The Theory of Electrons 1909, and the associated lecture notes of 1910, in which he describes Dingle's reciprocity paradox involving the Lorentz transformation half a century before Dingle did, and gives the resolution. "Attention must be drawn now to a remarkable reciprocity that has been pointed out by Einstein... The behavior of measuring rods and clocks in translational motion, when viewed superficially, give rise to a remarkable paradox which on closer examination, however, vanishes." Miller, A.I., Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, Springer, 1998.

An examination of the cited Lorentz book did not verify the purported statement made by Lorentz and reported by Miller. One wonders where Miller got it, or if it was misreported by a wikipedia editor. In any event, this misrepresents the position of Lorentz who is merely commenting on Einstein's theory. Reference 17 should be deleted.


 * No, you mis-read the reference. It refers both to Lorentz's book, where of course he describes the reciprocity of Einstein's interpretation, but also to "the associated lecture notes of 1910, in which he describes" the reciprocity and from which the quoted words were taken. This is plainly stated in the words that you quoted, so there's no reason for you to wonder "where Miller got it". This is a perfectly legitimate and highly reputable and relevant source, which does indeed make it quite clear that Dingle's ideas were wrong, and moreover that they were known to be wrong decades before Dingle voiced them.63.24.97.207 (talk) 02:22, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

All in all, I was able to find a number of pretty big mistakes in this article and I cant help but think that they were due to poor work on the part of wikipedia editors. I don't reccomend using any information from this article as accurate.72.84.64.254 (talk) 16:35, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Each of the things that you thought were "pretty big mistakes" are entirely correct and fully supported by an abundance of reputable sources.63.24.97.207 (talk) 02:22, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

A Misunderstood Rebellion
An excellent secondary source on the second controversy:

I will provide a copy on request. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This article is full of lies
The following fragments are wrong. Please remove them:

1.)"As Whitrow explained in his review of "Science at the Crossroads"...", <- this is not correct.

I checked the Obituaries document by Whitrow mentioned in the page, and there is nothing about criticism to "Science at the Crossroads"! So please remove that statement because it is wrong.

2.) The formulae at link [13] ("The Lorentz transformation is x'=(x−vt)β...") are given without citation, so that means some religious relativist decided to reinforce his own propaganda here. Please don't say that everybody agrees with those contradictions (that "the first implies t'/t =β and the second implies t/t'=β "), while that has been the subject of controversy for over a century.

And also as you don't provide a citation, don't ask me for citation when I am removing that pathetic attempt to cover up a contradiction similar to one noticed by Dingle!

This is a matter of logic and science: if the two systems are equivalent, then their conditions are the same. There is no need to quote anybody, it's simple logic. So *your* argument that "these ratios apply to two different conditions" fails.

So there *is* a contradiction.

And it cannot be solved by Special Relativity itself. Check the book "Einstein's General Theory of Relativity" by Øyvind Grøn and Sigbjørn Hervik, at page 34-35 the section "2.9 The Twin Paradox", where it is showed the two systems are in contradiction and it is suggested the resolution by General Relativity in the further chapter 5 of the same book.

3.) The link [19] which claims that Lorentz "describes Dingle's reciprocity paradox involving the Lorentz transformation half a century before Dingle did".

That is a blatant lie. What Lorentz treated there was the invariance of the Maxwell's equations, between ether and respectively a moving system S.

Here is a quote from Lorentz' document ("The theory of electrons and its applications to the phenomena of light and radiant heat"), page 223, paragraph 189., just before the claimed quote by this article "Attention must be drawn now to a remarkable reciprocity" which appears in Lorentz' document on page 226 paragraph 192., continuing with the same settings mentioned at paragraph 189.(settings about the ether S0 and moving system S - which means NOT the two equivalent systems used by Dingle!):

"Let us imagine an observer, whom we shall call A0 and to whom we shall assign a fixed position in the ether, to be engaged in the study of the phenomena going on in the stationary system S0"[...] "Let A be a second observer, whose task it is to examine the phenomena in the system S, and who himself also moves through the ether with the velocity w"

4.) Another lie is the quote about "The behavior of measuring rods and clocks in translational motion, when viewed superficially..."

That is not from Lorentz' document.

So please delete all those fake references! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.113.238.66 (talk) 09:19, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Please put new talk page messages at the bottom of talk pages and sign your messages with four tildes ( ~ ). Thanks.
 * Re 1: See second halve of page 336 of Whitrow's cited Dingle obituary.
 * Re 2: You are talking about the twin paradox, which describes a non-symmetric situation, whereas the note (see Whitrow) is about a symmetric situation: from the point of view of A some set of events is used to calculate a clock rate, but from the point of view of B another set of events is used. So they tak about different things. It is neatly explained in, for example, and, as it happens, on my user page User:DVdm. There you can see that in equations (3) and (4), Dingle twice used the term "Rate of A" for two entirely different things. Likewise for the term "Rate of B". You can see where the simple mistake occurs. Check the colors. An analogy: when they look at each other through a gap between their fingers, A says that B is much smaller than A, and B says that A is much smaller than B. They say the same thing about different objects. That does not mean that the laws of perspective are contradictory.
 * Remarks about the twin paradox not being able to be solved by special relativity are not relevant here. Anyway, you can read in article Twin paradox that it can perfectly be solved bij SR. Grøn and Hervik seem to express a somewhat old fashioned and not generally accepted view here. But as I said, that is off topic here.
 * Re 3: You probably mean ref [20]. Looks properly sourced. Perhaps the one who has put this here can comment. - DVdm (talk) 10:00, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * See also the talk page archives and the section a bit higher here. All this was extensively discussed before and it looks there was a wp:CONSENSUS that there are no lies here. - DVdm (talk) 10:00, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


 * IP user, please be WP:CIVIL. Accusing fellow editors of spreading lies is not. If there are disagreements, we can talk about them. It would be nice if you could dial down the emphases, too. In general, those who talk here are carefully reading what others write. Also, we generally use italics for emphasis on talk pages, rather than bolding.
 * 1) Corrected the text so it correctly describes the cited source, I think that was the issue here.
 * 2) Removed the WP:CHALLENGEd footnote, added description of Whitrow's reasoning.
 * 3) Removed the contested footnote without prejudice. The claim in the article is already well supported by the other citations attached to it, and we're interested in the state of the scientific consensus anyway, not the particular arguments used to support that consensus. I call KISS on this.
 * 4) Not from the Lorentz document, that is correct. Nor has that been claimed. Please read the footnote again. Paradoctor (talk) 11:45, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Probably a good call, this, specially in the long run. Thanks. - DVdm (talk) 11:51, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * @174.113.238.66 It's a pseudoscientific religious system, unfortunately. 2A02:A420:4A:6083:2:2:79F6:ACE8 (talk) 21:12, 11 August 2022 (UTC)