  Above and beyond his extreme language, Dingle makes certain substantive claims bearing directly upon central philosophical questions. The issue, as he sees it, is nothing more than the question “Whether the foundation of science shall be observation or invention” (Dingle 1937, p. 786). As always, talk about ‘foundations’ is philosophical talk. The two opposing positions Dingle here calls “foundational” involve views on both method and epistemology, suitably tangled together. Dingle delineates the opposed alternatives as follows. The way of true science, he claims, shows that “the first step in the study of Nature should be sense observation, no general principles being admitted which are not derived by induction therefrom” (Dingle 1937, p. 784). Stated more explicitly, Dingle here argues that authentic science is empiricist in epistemology (scientific knowledge is founded in sensory observation), and inductivist in method (general principles are reached via inductive logic). Opposed to this view, he argues, is “the doctrine that Nature is the visible working-out of general principles known to the human mind apart from sense perception” (Dingle 1937, p. 787). As representative of this latter view Dingle cites Milne, and refers in particular to Milne’s claim that “it is, in fact, possible to derive the laws of dynamics rationally…without recourse to experience” (Milne 1937, p. 329). Obviously, Dingle is here arguing against the view, Milne’s view, that authentic science may be rationalist in epistemology (scientific knowledge is founded in pure theoretical reasoning apart from sense perception), and hypothetico-deductive in method (general principles are justified by their deductively implying correct observations).