He believed that science is explanation, not description or prediction, and he compared the explanatory power of the Copernican astronomical system with the explanatory weakness of the epicycles of the Ptolemaic system, both of which had equal descriptive and predictive power.
He also believed that the purpose of language was chiefly communication, and his linguistic analyses reflected that orientation, along with that of human psychology and physiology.
During Diver’s career, most popular schools of linguistic thought tended towards pure formalism, based on traditional categories and entities, such as the parts of speech and the sentence.
The article on the Columbia School of Linguistics has more details and successful application of Diver's methodology.
in English literature from Harvard and his Ph.D. in comparative Indo-European linguistics from Columbia University.