It has been a long-standing question whether dewetting of polymer film from non-wettable substrate surfaces wherein the bicontinuous morphology never forms in the dewetting film is due to spinodal instability or heterogeneous nucleation. In this experiment, we use a simple method to make the distinction through introduction of topographical defects of the films by rubbing the sample surface with a rayon cloth. Spinodal dewetting is identified for those films that dewet by a characteristic wavevector, q*, independent of the density of rubbing-induced defects. Heterogeneous nucleation, on the other hand, is identified for those with q* increasing with increasing density of defects. Our result shows that PS films on oxide coated silicon with thickness less than ≈ 13 nm are dominated by spinodal dewetting, but the thicker films are dominated by nucleation dewetting. We also confirm that spinodal dewetting does not necessarily lead to a bicontinuous morphology in the dewetting film, contrary to the classic theory of Cahn.