Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy
Encyclopedia
The aspects of Bertrand Russell views on philosophy cover the changing viewpoints of philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970), from his early writings in 1896 until his death in February 1970.
, but he also produced a body of work that covers logic, the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, ethics and epistemology, including his 1913 Theory of Knowledge and the related article he wrote for the 1926 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica
.
. This revolt was echoed 30 years later in Vienna
by the logical positivists'
"revolt against metaphysics
." Russell was particularly critical of a doctrine he ascribed to idealism and coherentism
, which he dubbed the doctrine of internal relations
; this, Russell suggested, held that in order to know any particular thing, we must know all of its relations. Russell argued that this would make space
, time
, science
and the concept of number
not fully intelligible. Russell's logical work with Whitehead
continued this project.
Russell and Moore were devoted to clarity in arguments by breaking down philosophical position into their simplest components. Russell, in particular, saw formal logic and science
as the principal tools of the philosopher. Russell did't think we should have separate methods for philosophy. Russell thought philosophers should strive to answer the most general of propositions about the world
and this would help eliminate confusions. In particular, he wanted to end what he saw as the excesses of metaphysics. Russell adopted William of Ockham
's principle against multiplying unnecessary entities, Occam's Razor
, as a central part of the method of analysis.
. The American philosopher and logician Willard Quine said Russell's work represented the greatest influence on his own work.
Russell's first mathematical book, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, was published in 1897. This work was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant
. Russell later realized that the conception it laid out would make Albert Einstein's schema of space-time impossible. Thenceforth, he rejected the entire Kantian program as it related to mathematics and geometry
, and rejected his own earliest work on the subject.
Interested in the definition of number
, Russell studied the work of George Boole
, Georg Cantor
, and Augustus De Morgan
. Materials in the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University
include notes of his reading in algebraic logic
by Charles Sanders Peirce and Ernst Schröder
. In 1900 he attended the first International Congress of Philosophy in Paris
, where he became familiar with the work of the Italian mathematician, Giuseppe Peano
. He mastered Peano's new symbolism and his set of axioms for arithmetic
. Peano defined logically all of the terms of these axioms with the exception of 0, number, successor, and the singular term, the, which were the primitives of his system. Russell took it upon himself to find logical definitions for each of these. Between 1897 and 1903 he published several articles applying Peano's notation to the classical Boole-Schröder algebra of relations, among them On the Notion of Order, Sur la logique des relations avec les applications à la théorie des séries, and On Cardinal Numbers. He became convinced that the foundations of mathematics could be derived within what has since come to be called higher-order logic
which in turn he believed to include some form of unrestricted comprehension axiom.
Russell then discovered that Gottlob Frege had independently arrived at equivalent definitions for 0, successor, and number, and the definition of number is now usually referred to as the Frege-Russell definition. Russell drew attention to Frege's priority in 1903, when he published The Principles of Mathematics
(see below). The appendix to this work, however, described a paradox arising from Frege's application of second- and higher-order functions which took first-order functions as their arguments, and Russell offered his first effort to resolve what would henceforth come to be known as the Russell Paradox
. Before writing Principles, Russell became aware of Cantor's proof that there was no greatest cardinal number
, which Russell believed was mistaken. The Cantor Paradox in turn was shown (for example by Crossley) to be a special case of the Russell Paradox. This caused Russell to analyze classes
, for it was known that given any number of elements, the number of classes they result in is greater than their number. This in turn led to the discovery of a very interesting class, namely, the class of all classes. It contains two kinds of classes: those classes that contain themselves, and those that do not. Consideration of this class led him to find a fatal flaw in the so-called principle of comprehension, which had been taken for granted by logicians of the time. He showed that it resulted in a contradiction, whereby Y is a member of Y, if and only if, Y is not a member of Y. This has become known as Russell's paradox
, the solution to which he outlined in an appendix to Principles, and which he later developed into a complete theory, the Theory of types. Aside from exposing a major inconsistency in naive set theory
, Russell's work led directly to the creation of modern axiomatic set theory
. It also crippled Frege's project of reducing arithmetic to logic. The Theory of Types and much of Russell's subsequent work have also found practical applications with computer science
and information technology
.
Russell continued to defend logicism
, the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic, and along with his former teacher, Alfred North Whitehead
, wrote the monumental Principia Mathematica
, an axiomatic system
on which all of mathematics can be built. The first volume of the Principia was published in 1910, and is largely ascribed to Russell. More than any other single work, it established the specialty of mathematical or symbolic logic. Two more volumes were published, but their original plan to incorporate geometry in a fourth volume was never realized, and Russell never felt up to improving the original works, though he referenced new developments and problems in his preface to the second edition. Upon completing the Principia, three volumes of extraordinarily abstract
and complex reasoning, Russell was exhausted, and he felt his intellectual faculties never fully recovered from the effort. Although the Principia did not fall prey to the paradox
es in Frege's approach, it was later proven by Kurt Gödel
that neither Principia Mathematica, nor any other consistent system of primitive recursive arithmetic, could, within that system, determine that every proposition that could be formulated within that system was decidable, i.e. could decide whether that proposition or its negation was provable within the system (See: Gödel's incompleteness theorem).
Russell's last significant work in mathematics and logic, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, was written while he was in jail
for his anti-war
activities during World War I
. This was largely an explication of his previous work and its philosophical significance.
, Gilbert Ryle
, J. L. Austin
, and P. F. Strawson
, among others, who used many of the techniques that Russell originally developed. Russell, and GE Moore, argued that clarity of expression is a virtue.
A significant contribution to philosophy of language
is Russell's theory of descriptions
, set out in On Denoting
(Mind
, 1905). Frank P. Ramsey
described this paper as "a paradigm of philosophy." The theory considers the sentence "The present King of France is bald" and whether the proposition is false or meaningless. Frege
had argued, employing his distinction between sense and reference, that such sentences,were meaningful but neither true nor false. Russell argues that the grammatical form of the sentence disguises its underlying logical form
. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions enables the sentence to be construed as meaningful but false, without commitment to the existence of any present King of France. This addresses a paradox of great antiquity (e.g. "That which is not must in some sense be. Otherwise, how could we say of it that it is not?" etc), going back at least as far as Parmenides
. In Russell's own time, Meinong
held the view of that which is not being in some sense real; and Russell held this view prior to On Denoting.
The problem is general to what are called "definite description
s." Normally this includes all terms beginning with "the," and sometimes includes names, like "Walter Scott." (This point is quite contentious: Russell sometimes thought that the latter terms shouldn't be called names at all, but only "disguised definite descriptions," but much subsequent work has treated them as altogether different things.) What is the "logical form
" of definite descriptions: how, in Frege's terms, could we paraphrase them in order to show how the truth
of the whole depends on the truths of the parts? Definite descriptions appear to be like names that by their very nature denote exactly one thing, neither more nor less. What, then, are we to say about the proposition as a whole if one of its parts apparently isn't functioning correctly?
Russell's solution
was, first of all, to analyze not the term alone but the entire proposition that contained a definite description. "The present king of France is bald," he then suggested, can be reworded to "There is an x such that x is a present king of France, nothing other than x is a present king of France, and x is bald." Russell claimed that each definite description in fact contains a claim of existence
and a claim of uniqueness which give this appearance, but these can be broken apart and treated separately from the predication that is the obvious content of the proposition. The proposition as a whole then says three things about some object: the definite description contains two of them, and the rest of the sentence
contains the other. If the object does not exist, or if it is not unique, then the whole sentence turns out to be false, not meaningless.
One of the major complaints against Russell's theory, due originally to Strawson, is that definite descriptions do not claim that their object exists, they merely presuppose that it does.
Wittgenstein, Russell's student, achieved considerable prominence in the philosophy of language after the posthumous publication of the Philosophical Investigations
. In Russell's opinion, Wittgenstein's later work was misguided, and he decried its influence and that of its followers (especially members of the so-called "Oxford school" of ordinary language philosophy
, whom he believed were promoting a kind of mysticism
). He wrote a foreword to Ernest Gellner
s Word and Things which was a fierce attack on the Oxford School of Ordinary Language philosophy and Wittgensteins later work and was supportive of Gellner in the subsequent academic dispute. However, Russell still held Wittgenstein and his early work in high regard, he thought of him as, "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating." Russell's belief that philosophy's task is not limited to examining ordinary language is once again widely accepted in philosophy.
, which is explicated in a set of lectures, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," which he gave in 1918. In these lectures, Russell sets forth his concept of an ideal, isomorphic language, one that would mirror the world, whereby our knowledge can be reduced to terms of atomic propositions and their truth-functional compounds. Logical atomism is a form of radical empiricism, for Russell believed the most important requirement for such an ideal language is that every meaningful proposition must consist of terms referring directly to the objects with which we are acquainted, or that they are defined by other terms referring to objects with which we are acquainted. Russell excluded some formal, logical terms such as all, the, is, and so forth, from his isomorphic requirement, but he was never entirely satisfied with our understanding of such terms. One of the central themes of Russell's atomism is that the world consists of logically independent facts, a plurality of facts, and that our knowledge depends on the data of our direct experience of them. In his later life, Russell came to doubt aspects of logical atomism, especially his principle of isomorphism, though he continued to believe that the process of philosophy ought to consist of breaking things down into their simplest components, even though we might not ever fully arrive at an ultimate atomic fact.
for the remainder of his life, believing that our direct experiences have primacy in the acquisition of knowledge. While some of his views have lost favour, his influence remains strong in the distinction between two ways in which we can be familiar with objects: "knowledge by acquaintance
" and "knowledge by description
". For a time, Russell thought that we could only be acquainted with our own sense data
—momentary perceptions of colors, sounds, and the like—and that everything else, including the physical objects that these were sense data of, could only be inferred, or reasoned to—i.e. known by description—and not known directly. This distinction has gained much wider application, though Russell eventually rejected the idea of an intermediate sense datum.
In his later philosophy, Russell subscribed to a kind of neutral monism
, maintaining that the distinctions between the material and mental worlds, in the final analysis, were arbitrary, and that both can be reduced to a neutral property—a view similar to one held by the American philosopher/psychologist, William James
, and one that was first formulated by Baruch Spinoza
, whom Russell greatly admired. Instead of James' "pure experience," however, Russell characterised the stuff of our initial states of perception as "events," a stance which is curiously akin to his old teacher Whitehead's
process philosophy
.
, that science reaches only tentative answers, that scientific progress is piecemeal, and attempts to find organic unities were largely futile. He believed the same was true of philosophy. Russell held that the ultimate objective of both science and philosophy was to understand reality
, not simply to make predictions.
Russell's work contributed to philosophy of science
's development into a separate branch of philosophy. Much of Russell's thinking about science is expressed in his 1914 book, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy, which influenced the logical positivists.
Russell held that of the physical world we know only its abstract structure except for the intrinsic character of our own brain with which we have direct acquaintance (Russell, 1948). Russell said that he had always assumed copunctuality between percepts and non-percepts, and percepts were also part of the physical world, a part of which we knew its intrinsic character directly, knowledge which goes beyond structure. His views on science have become integrated into the contemporary debate in the philosophy of science as a form of Structural Realism, people such as Elie Zahar and Ioannis Votsis have discussed the implications of his work for our understanding of science. The seminal article "The Concept of Structure in The Analysis of Matter" by William Demopoulos and Michael Friedman was crucial in reintegrating Russell's views to the contemporary scene.
Russell wrote several science books, including The ABC of Atoms (1923) and The ABC of Relativity (1925).
, but known only through intuition
; that they were simple properties of objects, not equivalent (e.g., pleasure is good) to the natural objects to which they are often ascribed (see Naturalistic fallacy
); and that these simple, undefinable moral properties cannot be analyzed using the non-moral properties with which they are associated. In time, however, he came to agree with his philosophical hero, David Hume
, who believed that ethical terms dealt with subjective
values
that cannot be verified in the same way as matters of fact.
Coupled with Russell's other doctrines, this influenced the logical positivists, who formulated the theory of emotivism
or non-cognitivism, which states that ethical propositions (along with those of metaphysics
) were essentially meaningless and nonsensical or, at best, little more than expressions of attitudes
and preferences. Notwithstanding his influence on them, Russell himself did not construe ethical propositions as narrowly as the positivists, for he believed that ethical considerations are not only meaningful, but that they are a vital subject matter for civil discourse. Indeed, though Russell was often characterised as the patron saint
of rationality, he agreed with Hume, who said that reason ought to be subordinate to ethical considerations.
is little more than superstition
and, despite any positive effects that religion might have, it is largely harmful to people. He believed religion and the religious outlook (he considered communism
and other systematic ideologies
to be forms of religion) serve to impede knowledge, foster fear and dependency, and are responsible for much of the war, oppression, and misery that have beset the world.
In his 1949 speech, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?", Russell expressed his difficulty over whether to call himself an atheist
or an agnostic
:
However, in the "1948 BBC Radio Debate" between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston
, Russell chose to assume the position of the agnostic, though it seems to have been because he admitted to not being able to prove the non-existence of God:
Though he would later question God's existence, he fully accepted the ontological argument
during his undergraduate years:
This quote has been used by many theologians over the years, such as by Louis Pojman
in his Philosophy of Religion, who wish for readers to believe that even a well-known atheist-philosopher supported this particular argument for God's existence. However, elsewhere in his autobiography, Russell also mentions:
Russell made an influential analysis of the omphalos hypothesis enunciated by Philip Henry Gosse
—that any argument suggesting that the world was created as if it were already in motion could just as easily make it a few minutes old as a few thousand years:
As a young man, Russell had a decidedly religious bent, himself, as is evident in his early Platonism
. He longed for eternal
truths, as he makes clear in his famous essay, "A Free Man's Worship", widely regarded as a masterpiece of prose, but a work that Russell came to dislike. While he rejected the supernatural
, he freely admitted that he yearned for a deeper meaning to life.
Russell's views on religion can be found in his book, Why I Am Not a Christian
and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. Its title essay was a talk given on 6 March 1927 at Battersea Town Hall, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society
, UK, and published later that year as a pamphlet
. The book also contains other essays in which Russell considers a number of logical arguments for the existence of God
, including the first cause argument, the natural-law argument
, the argument from design, and moral arguments. He also discusses specifics about Christian theology
.
His conclusion:
-speaking world. While others were also influential, notably Frege, Moore
, and Wittgenstein, Russell made analysis the dominant methodology of professional philosophy. The various analytic movements throughout the last century all owe something to Russell's earlier works. Even Ray Monk, no admirer of Russell as a person, characterized his work on the philosophy of mathematics as intense, august and incontestably great and acknowledged in the preface to the second volume of his biography that he is one of the indisputably great philosophers of the twentieth century.
Russell's influence on individual philosophers is singular, perhaps most notably in the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein
, who was his student between 1911 and 1914.
Wittgenstein had an important influence on Russell as he himself discusses in his My Philosophical Development. He led him, for example, to conclude, much to his regret, that mathematical truths were purely tautological
truths, however it is doubtful that Wittgenstein actually held this view, which he discussed in relation to logical truth
, since it is not clear that he was a logicist when he wrote the Tractatus. What is certain is that in 1901 Russell's own reflections on the issues raised by the paradox that takes his name Russell's Paradox
, led him to doubt the intuitive certainty of mathematics. This doubt was perhaps Russell's most important 'influence' on mathematics, and was spread throughout the European universities, even as Russell himself laboured (with Alfred North Whitehead
) in an attempt to solve the Paradox and related paradoxes, such as Burali-Forti. As Stewart Shapiro explains in his Thinking About Mathematics, Russell's attempts to solve the paradoxes led to the ramified theory of types, which, though it is highly complex and relies on the doubtful axiom of reducibility, actually manages to solve both syntactic and semantic paradoxes at the expense of rendering the logicist project suspect and introducing much complexity in the PM system. Philosopher and logician F.P. Ramsey would later simplify the theory of types arguing that there was no need to solve both semantic and syntactic paradoxes in order to provide a foundation for mathematics. The philosopher and logician George Boolos discusses the power of the PM system in the preface to his Logic, logic & logic, stating that it is powerful enough to derive most classical mathematics, equating the power of PM to that of Z, a weaker form of set theory than ZFC (Zermelo-Fraenkel Set theory with Choice). In fact, ZFC actually does circumvent Russell's paradox by restricting the comprehension axiom to already existing sets by the use of subset axioms.
Russell wrote (in Portraits from Memory, 1956) of his reaction to Gödel's 'Theorems of Undecidability':
Evidence of Russell's influence on Wittgenstein can be seen throughout the Tractatus
, which Russell was instrumental in having published. Russell also helped to secure Wittgenstein's doctorate
and a faculty position at Cambridge
, along with several fellowships along the way.
However, as previously stated, he came to disagree with Wittgenstein's later linguistic and analytic approach to philosophy dismissing it as "trivial", while Wittgenstein came to think of Russell as "superficial and glib", particularly in his popular writings. However, Norman Malcolm tells us in his recollections of Wittgenstein that Wittgenstein showed a deference towards Russell such as he never saw him show towards any one, and even went so far as to reprimand students of his who criticized Russell. As Ray Monk relates in his biography of Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein used to say that Russell's books should be bound in two covers, those dealing with mathematical philosophy in blue, and every student of philosophy should read them, while those dealing with popular subjects should be bound in red and no one should be allowed to read them.
Russell's influence is also evident in the work of Alfred J. Ayer
, Rudolf Carnap
, Alonzo Church
, Kurt Gödel
, David Kaplan
, Saul Kripke
, Karl Popper
, W. V. Quine
, John R. Searle, and a number of other philosophers and logicians.
Some see Russell's influence as mostly negative, primarily those who have criticized Russell's emphasis on science and logic. Russell often characterized his moral and political writings as lying outside the scope of philosophy, but Russell's admirers and detractors are often more acquainted with his pronouncements on social and political matters, or what some (e.g., biographer Ray Monk
) have called his "journalism
," than they are with his technical, philosophical work. There is a marked tendency to conflate these matters, and to judge Russell the philosopher on what he himself would definitely consider to be his non-philosophical opinions. Russell often cautioned people to make this distinction. Beginning in the 1920s, Russell wrote frequently for The Nation
on changing morals, disarmament
and literature
. In 1965, he wrote that the magazine "...has been one of the few voices which has been heard on behalf of individual liberty and social justice
consistently throughout its existence."
Russell left a large assortment of writing. From his adolescent years, he wrote about 3,000 words a day, with relatively few corrections; his first draft nearly always was his last, even on the most complex, technical matters. His previously unpublished work is an immense treasure trove, and scholars continue to gain new insights into Russell's thought.
Note: This is a mere sampling, for Russell also wrote many pamphlets, introductions, articles and letters to the editor. His works also can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, perhaps most notably The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University
began publishing in 1983. This collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works is now up to 16 volumes, and many more are forthcoming. An additional three volumes catalogue just his bibliography. The Russell Archives at McMaster University
also have more than 30,000 letters that he wrote.
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
(1872–1970), from his early writings in 1896 until his death in February 1970.
Philosophical work
Russell is generally credited with being one of the founders of analytic philosophyAnalytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
, but he also produced a body of work that covers logic, the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, ethics and epistemology, including his 1913 Theory of Knowledge and the related article he wrote for the 1926 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
.
Analytic philosophy
Bertrand Russell helped to develop what is now called "Analytic Philosophy." Alongside G. E. Moore, Russell was shown to be partly responsible for the British revolt against Idealism, a philosophy greatly influenced by G. W. F. Hegel and his British apostle, F. H. BradleyF. H. Bradley
Francis Herbert Bradley, OM, was a British idealist philosopher.- Life :Bradley was born at Clapham, Surrey, England . He was the child of Charles Bradley, an evangelical preacher, and Emma Linton, Charles's second wife. A. C. Bradley was his brother...
. This revolt was echoed 30 years later in Vienna
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
by the logical positivists'
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...
"revolt against metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
." Russell was particularly critical of a doctrine he ascribed to idealism and coherentism
Coherentism
There are two distinct types of coherentism. One refers to the coherence theory of truth. The other refers to the coherence theory of justification. The coherentist theory of justification characterizes epistemic justification as a property of a belief only if that belief is a member of a coherent...
, which he dubbed the doctrine of internal relations
Doctrine of internal relations
The doctrine of internal relations is the philosophical doctrine that all relations are internal to their bearers, in the sense that they are essential to them and the bearers would not be what they are without them. It was a term used in British philosophy around in the early 1900s...
; this, Russell suggested, held that in order to know any particular thing, we must know all of its relations. Russell argued that this would make space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
, time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
, science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and the concept of number
Number
A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....
not fully intelligible. Russell's logical work with Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
continued this project.
Russell and Moore were devoted to clarity in arguments by breaking down philosophical position into their simplest components. Russell, in particular, saw formal logic and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
as the principal tools of the philosopher. Russell did't think we should have separate methods for philosophy. Russell thought philosophers should strive to answer the most general of propositions about the world
World
World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....
and this would help eliminate confusions. In particular, he wanted to end what he saw as the excesses of metaphysics. Russell adopted William of Ockham
William of Ockham
William of Ockham was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of...
's principle against multiplying unnecessary entities, Occam's Razor
Occam's razor
Occam's razor, also known as Ockham's razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae , is a principle that generally recommends from among competing hypotheses selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.-Overview:The principle is often summarized as "simpler explanations...
, as a central part of the method of analysis.
Logic and philosophy of mathematics
Russell had great influence on modern mathematical logicMathematical logic
Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...
. The American philosopher and logician Willard Quine said Russell's work represented the greatest influence on his own work.
Russell's first mathematical book, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, was published in 1897. This work was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
. Russell later realized that the conception it laid out would make Albert Einstein's schema of space-time impossible. Thenceforth, he rejected the entire Kantian program as it related to mathematics and geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
, and rejected his own earliest work on the subject.
Interested in the definition of number
Number
A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....
, Russell studied the work of George Boole
George Boole
George Boole was an English mathematician and philosopher.As the inventor of Boolean logic—the basis of modern digital computer logic—Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science. Boole said,...
, Georg Cantor
Georg Cantor
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets,...
, and Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....
. Materials in the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University
McMaster University
McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
include notes of his reading in algebraic logic
Algebraic logic
In mathematical logic, algebraic logic is the study of logic presented in an algebraic style.What is now usually called classical algebraic logic focuses on the identification and algebraic description of models appropriate for the study of various logics and connected problems...
by Charles Sanders Peirce and Ernst Schröder
Ernst Schröder
Ernst Schröder was a German mathematician mainly known for his work on algebraic logic. He is a major figure in the history of mathematical logic , by virtue of summarizing and extending the work of George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, Hugh MacColl, and especially Charles Peirce...
. In 1900 he attended the first International Congress of Philosophy in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he became familiar with the work of the Italian mathematician, Giuseppe Peano
Giuseppe Peano
Giuseppe Peano was an Italian mathematician, whose work was of philosophical value. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms in...
. He mastered Peano's new symbolism and his set of axioms for arithmetic
Arithmetic
Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers...
. Peano defined logically all of the terms of these axioms with the exception of 0, number, successor, and the singular term, the, which were the primitives of his system. Russell took it upon himself to find logical definitions for each of these. Between 1897 and 1903 he published several articles applying Peano's notation to the classical Boole-Schröder algebra of relations, among them On the Notion of Order, Sur la logique des relations avec les applications à la théorie des séries, and On Cardinal Numbers. He became convinced that the foundations of mathematics could be derived within what has since come to be called higher-order logic
Higher-order logic
In mathematics and logic, a higher-order logic is a form of predicate logic that is distinguished from first-order logic by additional quantifiers and a stronger semantics...
which in turn he believed to include some form of unrestricted comprehension axiom.
Russell then discovered that Gottlob Frege had independently arrived at equivalent definitions for 0, successor, and number, and the definition of number is now usually referred to as the Frege-Russell definition. Russell drew attention to Frege's priority in 1903, when he published The Principles of Mathematics
The Principles of Mathematics
The Principles of Mathematics is a book written by Bertrand Russell in 1903. In it he presented his famous paradox and argued his thesis that mathematics and logic are identical....
(see below). The appendix to this work, however, described a paradox arising from Frege's application of second- and higher-order functions which took first-order functions as their arguments, and Russell offered his first effort to resolve what would henceforth come to be known as the Russell Paradox
Russell's paradox
In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox , discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory created by Georg Cantor leads to a contradiction...
. Before writing Principles, Russell became aware of Cantor's proof that there was no greatest cardinal number
Cardinal number
In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number – the number of elements in the set. The transfinite cardinal numbers describe the sizes of infinite...
, which Russell believed was mistaken. The Cantor Paradox in turn was shown (for example by Crossley) to be a special case of the Russell Paradox. This caused Russell to analyze classes
Class (set theory)
In set theory and its applications throughout mathematics, a class is a collection of sets which can be unambiguously defined by a property that all its members share. The precise definition of "class" depends on foundational context...
, for it was known that given any number of elements, the number of classes they result in is greater than their number. This in turn led to the discovery of a very interesting class, namely, the class of all classes. It contains two kinds of classes: those classes that contain themselves, and those that do not. Consideration of this class led him to find a fatal flaw in the so-called principle of comprehension, which had been taken for granted by logicians of the time. He showed that it resulted in a contradiction, whereby Y is a member of Y, if and only if, Y is not a member of Y. This has become known as Russell's paradox
Russell's paradox
In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox , discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory created by Georg Cantor leads to a contradiction...
, the solution to which he outlined in an appendix to Principles, and which he later developed into a complete theory, the Theory of types. Aside from exposing a major inconsistency in naive set theory
Naive set theory
Naive set theory is one of several theories of sets used in the discussion of the foundations of mathematics. The informal content of this naive set theory supports both the aspects of mathematical sets familiar in discrete mathematics , and the everyday usage of set theory concepts in most...
, Russell's work led directly to the creation of modern axiomatic set theory
Set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics...
. It also crippled Frege's project of reducing arithmetic to logic. The Theory of Types and much of Russell's subsequent work have also found practical applications with computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
and information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
.
Russell continued to defend logicism
Logicism
Logicism is one of the schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics, putting forth the theory that mathematics is an extension of logic and therefore some or all mathematics is reducible to logic. Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead championed this theory fathered by Richard Dedekind...
, the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic, and along with his former teacher, Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
, wrote the monumental Principia Mathematica
Principia Mathematica
The Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913...
, an axiomatic system
Axiomatic system
In mathematics, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. A mathematical theory consists of an axiomatic system and all its derived theorems...
on which all of mathematics can be built. The first volume of the Principia was published in 1910, and is largely ascribed to Russell. More than any other single work, it established the specialty of mathematical or symbolic logic. Two more volumes were published, but their original plan to incorporate geometry in a fourth volume was never realized, and Russell never felt up to improving the original works, though he referenced new developments and problems in his preface to the second edition. Upon completing the Principia, three volumes of extraordinarily abstract
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
and complex reasoning, Russell was exhausted, and he felt his intellectual faculties never fully recovered from the effort. Although the Principia did not fall prey to the paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
es in Frege's approach, it was later proven by Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...
that neither Principia Mathematica, nor any other consistent system of primitive recursive arithmetic, could, within that system, determine that every proposition that could be formulated within that system was decidable, i.e. could decide whether that proposition or its negation was provable within the system (See: Gödel's incompleteness theorem).
Russell's last significant work in mathematics and logic, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, was written while he was in jail
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
for his anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
activities during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. This was largely an explication of his previous work and its philosophical significance.
Philosophy of language
Russell made language, or more specifically, how we use language, a central part of philosophy, and this influenced Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle , was a British philosopher, a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the...
, J. L. Austin
J. L. Austin
John Langshaw Austin was a British philosopher of language, born in Lancaster and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford University. Austin is widely associated with the concept of the speech act and the idea that speech is itself a form of action...
, and P. F. Strawson
P. F. Strawson
Sir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1968 to 1987. Before that he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford in 1947 and became a tutorial fellow the...
, among others, who used many of the techniques that Russell originally developed. Russell, and GE Moore, argued that clarity of expression is a virtue.
A significant contribution to philosophy of language
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
is Russell's theory of descriptions
Theory of descriptions
The theory of descriptions is the philosopher Bertrand Russell's most significant contribution to the philosophy of language. It is also known as Russell's Theory of Descriptions...
, set out in On Denoting
On Denoting
"On Denoting", written by Bertrand Russell, is one of the most significant and influential philosophical essays of the 20th century. It was published in the philosophy journal Mind in 1905; then reprinted, in both a special 2005 anniversary issue of the same journal and in Russell's Logic and...
(Mind
Mind (journal)
Mind is a British journal, currently published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association, which deals with philosophy in the analytic tradition...
, 1905). Frank P. Ramsey
Frank P. Ramsey
Frank Plumpton Ramsey was a British mathematician who, in addition to mathematics, made significant and precocious contributions in philosophy and economics before his death at the age of 26...
described this paper as "a paradigm of philosophy." The theory considers the sentence "The present King of France is bald" and whether the proposition is false or meaningless. Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
had argued, employing his distinction between sense and reference, that such sentences,were meaningful but neither true nor false. Russell argues that the grammatical form of the sentence disguises its underlying logical form
Logical form
In logic, the logical form of a sentence or set of sentences is the form obtained by abstracting from the subject matter of its content terms or by regarding the content terms as mere placeholders or blanks on a form...
. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions enables the sentence to be construed as meaningful but false, without commitment to the existence of any present King of France. This addresses a paradox of great antiquity (e.g. "That which is not must in some sense be. Otherwise, how could we say of it that it is not?" etc), going back at least as far as Parmenides
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...
. In Russell's own time, Meinong
Alexius Meinong
Alexius Meinong was an Austrian philosopher, a realist known for his unique ontology...
held the view of that which is not being in some sense real; and Russell held this view prior to On Denoting.
The problem is general to what are called "definite description
Definite description
A definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is proper if X applies to a unique individual or object. For example: "the first person in space" and "the 42nd President of the United States of...
s." Normally this includes all terms beginning with "the," and sometimes includes names, like "Walter Scott." (This point is quite contentious: Russell sometimes thought that the latter terms shouldn't be called names at all, but only "disguised definite descriptions," but much subsequent work has treated them as altogether different things.) What is the "logical form
Logical form
In logic, the logical form of a sentence or set of sentences is the form obtained by abstracting from the subject matter of its content terms or by regarding the content terms as mere placeholders or blanks on a form...
" of definite descriptions: how, in Frege's terms, could we paraphrase them in order to show how the truth
Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
of the whole depends on the truths of the parts? Definite descriptions appear to be like names that by their very nature denote exactly one thing, neither more nor less. What, then, are we to say about the proposition as a whole if one of its parts apparently isn't functioning correctly?
Russell's solution
Solution
In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture composed of only one phase. In such a mixture, a solute is dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. The solvent does the dissolving.- Types of solutions :...
was, first of all, to analyze not the term alone but the entire proposition that contained a definite description. "The present king of France is bald," he then suggested, can be reworded to "There is an x such that x is a present king of France, nothing other than x is a present king of France, and x is bald." Russell claimed that each definite description in fact contains a claim of existence
Existence
In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity...
and a claim of uniqueness which give this appearance, but these can be broken apart and treated separately from the predication that is the obvious content of the proposition. The proposition as a whole then says three things about some object: the definite description contains two of them, and the rest of the sentence
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
contains the other. If the object does not exist, or if it is not unique, then the whole sentence turns out to be false, not meaningless.
One of the major complaints against Russell's theory, due originally to Strawson, is that definite descriptions do not claim that their object exists, they merely presuppose that it does.
Wittgenstein, Russell's student, achieved considerable prominence in the philosophy of language after the posthumous publication of the Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical Investigations is, along with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the most influential works by the 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein...
. In Russell's opinion, Wittgenstein's later work was misguided, and he decried its influence and that of its followers (especially members of the so-called "Oxford school" of ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean in everyday use....
, whom he believed were promoting a kind of mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
). He wrote a foreword to Ernest Gellner
Ernest Gellner
Ernest André Gellner was a philosopher and social anthropologist, described by The Daily Telegraph when he died as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals and by The Independent as a "one-man crusade for critical rationalism."His first book, Words and Things —famously, and uniquely...
s Word and Things which was a fierce attack on the Oxford School of Ordinary Language philosophy and Wittgensteins later work and was supportive of Gellner in the subsequent academic dispute. However, Russell still held Wittgenstein and his early work in high regard, he thought of him as, "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating." Russell's belief that philosophy's task is not limited to examining ordinary language is once again widely accepted in philosophy.
Logical atomism
Perhaps Russell's most systematic, metaphysical treatment of philosophical analysis and his empiricist-centric logicism is evident in what he called logical atomismLogical atomism
Logical atomism is a philosophical belief that originated in the early 20th century with the development of analytic philosophy. Its principal exponents were the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, the early work of his Austrian-born pupil and colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his German...
, which is explicated in a set of lectures, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," which he gave in 1918. In these lectures, Russell sets forth his concept of an ideal, isomorphic language, one that would mirror the world, whereby our knowledge can be reduced to terms of atomic propositions and their truth-functional compounds. Logical atomism is a form of radical empiricism, for Russell believed the most important requirement for such an ideal language is that every meaningful proposition must consist of terms referring directly to the objects with which we are acquainted, or that they are defined by other terms referring to objects with which we are acquainted. Russell excluded some formal, logical terms such as all, the, is, and so forth, from his isomorphic requirement, but he was never entirely satisfied with our understanding of such terms. One of the central themes of Russell's atomism is that the world consists of logically independent facts, a plurality of facts, and that our knowledge depends on the data of our direct experience of them. In his later life, Russell came to doubt aspects of logical atomism, especially his principle of isomorphism, though he continued to believe that the process of philosophy ought to consist of breaking things down into their simplest components, even though we might not ever fully arrive at an ultimate atomic fact.
Epistemology
Russell's epistemology went through many phases. Once he shed neo-Hegelianism in his early years, Russell remained a philosophical realistPhilosophical realism
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc....
for the remainder of his life, believing that our direct experiences have primacy in the acquisition of knowledge. While some of his views have lost favour, his influence remains strong in the distinction between two ways in which we can be familiar with objects: "knowledge by acquaintance
Knowledge by acquaintance
The contrasting expressions "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge by description" were promoted by Bertrand Russell, who was extremely critical of the equivocal nature of the word know, and believed that the equivocation arose from a failure to distinguish between the two fundamentally...
" and "knowledge by description
Knowledge by description
The contrasting expressions "knowledge by description" and "knowledge by acquaintance" were promoted by Bertrand Russell, who was extremely critical of the equivocal nature of the word know, and believed that the equivocation arose from a failure to distinguish between the two fundamentally...
". For a time, Russell thought that we could only be acquainted with our own sense data
Sense data
In the philosophy of perception, the theory of sense data was a popular view held the early 20th century by philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, C. D. Broad, H. H. Price, A.J. Ayer and G.E. Moore, among others. Sense data are supposedly mind-dependent objects whose existence and properties are...
—momentary perceptions of colors, sounds, and the like—and that everything else, including the physical objects that these were sense data of, could only be inferred, or reasoned to—i.e. known by description—and not known directly. This distinction has gained much wider application, though Russell eventually rejected the idea of an intermediate sense datum.
In his later philosophy, Russell subscribed to a kind of neutral monism
Neutral monism
Neutral monism, in philosophy, is the metaphysical view that the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same elements, which are themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical nor mental. This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally...
, maintaining that the distinctions between the material and mental worlds, in the final analysis, were arbitrary, and that both can be reduced to a neutral property—a view similar to one held by the American philosopher/psychologist, William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
, and one that was first formulated by Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, whom Russell greatly admired. Instead of James' "pure experience," however, Russell characterised the stuff of our initial states of perception as "events," a stance which is curiously akin to his old teacher Whitehead's
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
process philosophy
Process philosophy
Process philosophy identifies metaphysical reality with change and dynamism. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have posited true reality as "timeless", based on permanent substances, whilst processes are denied or subordinated to timeless substances...
.
Philosophy of science
Russell claimed that he was more convinced of his method of doing philosophy than of his philosophical conclusions. Science was one of the principal components of analysis. Russell was a believer in the scientific methodScientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
, that science reaches only tentative answers, that scientific progress is piecemeal, and attempts to find organic unities were largely futile. He believed the same was true of philosophy. Russell held that the ultimate objective of both science and philosophy was to understand reality
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
, not simply to make predictions.
Russell's work contributed to philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
's development into a separate branch of philosophy. Much of Russell's thinking about science is expressed in his 1914 book, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy, which influenced the logical positivists.
Russell held that of the physical world we know only its abstract structure except for the intrinsic character of our own brain with which we have direct acquaintance (Russell, 1948). Russell said that he had always assumed copunctuality between percepts and non-percepts, and percepts were also part of the physical world, a part of which we knew its intrinsic character directly, knowledge which goes beyond structure. His views on science have become integrated into the contemporary debate in the philosophy of science as a form of Structural Realism, people such as Elie Zahar and Ioannis Votsis have discussed the implications of his work for our understanding of science. The seminal article "The Concept of Structure in The Analysis of Matter" by William Demopoulos and Michael Friedman was crucial in reintegrating Russell's views to the contemporary scene.
Russell wrote several science books, including The ABC of Atoms (1923) and The ABC of Relativity (1925).
Ethics
While Russell wrote a great deal on ethical subject matters, he did not believe that the subject belonged to philosophy or that when he wrote on ethics that he did so in his capacity as a philosopher. In his earlier years, Russell was greatly influenced by G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica. Along with Moore, he then believed that moral facts were objectiveObjectivity (philosophy)
Objectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.- Objectivism...
, but known only through intuition
Intuition (knowledge)
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify...
; that they were simple properties of objects, not equivalent (e.g., pleasure is good) to the natural objects to which they are often ascribed (see Naturalistic fallacy
Naturalistic fallacy
The naturalistic fallacy is often claimed to be a formal fallacy. It was described and named by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica...
); and that these simple, undefinable moral properties cannot be analyzed using the non-moral properties with which they are associated. In time, however, he came to agree with his philosophical hero, David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, who believed that ethical terms dealt with subjective
Subjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
values
Value (personal and cultural)
A personal or cultural value is an absolute or relative ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based...
that cannot be verified in the same way as matters of fact.
Coupled with Russell's other doctrines, this influenced the logical positivists, who formulated the theory of emotivism
Emotivism
Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and...
or non-cognitivism, which states that ethical propositions (along with those of metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
) were essentially meaningless and nonsensical or, at best, little more than expressions of attitudes
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...
and preferences. Notwithstanding his influence on them, Russell himself did not construe ethical propositions as narrowly as the positivists, for he believed that ethical considerations are not only meaningful, but that they are a vital subject matter for civil discourse. Indeed, though Russell was often characterised as the patron saint
Patron saint
A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
of rationality, he agreed with Hume, who said that reason ought to be subordinate to ethical considerations.
Religion and theology
For most of his adult life Russell maintained that religionReligion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
is little more than superstition
Superstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....
and, despite any positive effects that religion might have, it is largely harmful to people. He believed religion and the religious outlook (he considered communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and other systematic ideologies
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
to be forms of religion) serve to impede knowledge, foster fear and dependency, and are responsible for much of the war, oppression, and misery that have beset the world.
In his 1949 speech, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?", Russell expressed his difficulty over whether to call himself an atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
or an agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....
:
However, in the "1948 BBC Radio Debate" between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston
Frederick Copleston
Frederick Charles Copleston, SJ, CBE was a Jesuit priest and historian of philosophy.-Biography:...
, Russell chose to assume the position of the agnostic, though it seems to have been because he admitted to not being able to prove the non-existence of God:
Though he would later question God's existence, he fully accepted the ontological argument
Ontological argument
The ontological argument for the existence of God is an a priori argument for the existence of God. The ontological argument was first proposed by the eleventh-century monk Anselm of Canterbury, who defined God as the greatest possible being we can conceive...
during his undergraduate years:
This quote has been used by many theologians over the years, such as by Louis Pojman
Louis Pojman
Louis Paul Pojman was an American philosopher and professor, whose name is most recognized as the author of over a hundred philosophy texts and anthologies which he himself read at more than sixty universities around the world and which continue to be used widely for educational purposes. Dr...
in his Philosophy of Religion, who wish for readers to believe that even a well-known atheist-philosopher supported this particular argument for God's existence. However, elsewhere in his autobiography, Russell also mentions:
Russell made an influential analysis of the omphalos hypothesis enunciated by Philip Henry Gosse
Philip Henry Gosse
Philip Henry Gosse was an English naturalist and popularizer of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology...
—that any argument suggesting that the world was created as if it were already in motion could just as easily make it a few minutes old as a few thousand years:
As a young man, Russell had a decidedly religious bent, himself, as is evident in his early Platonism
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism...
. He longed for eternal
Eternity
While in the popular mind, eternity often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast,...
truths, as he makes clear in his famous essay, "A Free Man's Worship", widely regarded as a masterpiece of prose, but a work that Russell came to dislike. While he rejected the supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
, he freely admitted that he yearned for a deeper meaning to life.
Russell's views on religion can be found in his book, Why I Am Not a Christian
Why I Am Not a Christian
Why I Am Not a Christian is a 1927 essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell hailed by The Independent as "devastating in its use of cold logic", and listed in the New York Public Library's list of the most influential books of the 20th century....
and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. Its title essay was a talk given on 6 March 1927 at Battersea Town Hall, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society
National Secular Society
The National Secular Society is a British campaigning organisation that promotes secularism and the separation of church and state. It holds that no-one should gain advantage or disadvantage because of their religion or lack of religion. It was founded by Charles Bradlaugh in 1866...
, UK, and published later that year as a pamphlet
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
. The book also contains other essays in which Russell considers a number of logical arguments for the existence of God
Existence of God
Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others. In philosophical terms, arguments for and against the existence of God involve primarily the sub-disciplines of epistemology and ontology , but also of the theory of value, since...
, including the first cause argument, the natural-law argument
Natural-law argument
Natural-law argument for the existence of God was especially popular in the eighteenth century as a result of the influence of Sir Isaac Newton. Observers concluded that things are the way they are because God intended them to be that way, though He operated outside of the natural law, Himself, as...
, the argument from design, and moral arguments. He also discusses specifics about Christian theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
.
His conclusion:
Influence on philosophy
As Nicholas Griffin discusses in the introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell, Russell had a major influence on modern philosophy, especially in the EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
-speaking world. While others were also influential, notably Frege, Moore
George Edward Moore
George Edward Moore OM, was an English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy...
, and Wittgenstein, Russell made analysis the dominant methodology of professional philosophy. The various analytic movements throughout the last century all owe something to Russell's earlier works. Even Ray Monk, no admirer of Russell as a person, characterized his work on the philosophy of mathematics as intense, august and incontestably great and acknowledged in the preface to the second volume of his biography that he is one of the indisputably great philosophers of the twentieth century.
Russell's influence on individual philosophers is singular, perhaps most notably in the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, who was his student between 1911 and 1914.
Wittgenstein had an important influence on Russell as he himself discusses in his My Philosophical Development. He led him, for example, to conclude, much to his regret, that mathematical truths were purely tautological
Tautology (logic)
In logic, a tautology is a formula which is true in every possible interpretation. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies of propositional logic in 1921; it had been used earlier to refer to rhetorical tautologies, and continues to be used in that alternate sense...
truths, however it is doubtful that Wittgenstein actually held this view, which he discussed in relation to logical truth
Logical truth
Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic, and there are different theories on its nature. A logical truth is a statement which is true and remains true under all reinterpretations of its components other than its logical constants. It is a type of analytic statement.Logical...
, since it is not clear that he was a logicist when he wrote the Tractatus. What is certain is that in 1901 Russell's own reflections on the issues raised by the paradox that takes his name Russell's Paradox
Russell's paradox
In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox , discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory created by Georg Cantor leads to a contradiction...
, led him to doubt the intuitive certainty of mathematics. This doubt was perhaps Russell's most important 'influence' on mathematics, and was spread throughout the European universities, even as Russell himself laboured (with Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
) in an attempt to solve the Paradox and related paradoxes, such as Burali-Forti. As Stewart Shapiro explains in his Thinking About Mathematics, Russell's attempts to solve the paradoxes led to the ramified theory of types, which, though it is highly complex and relies on the doubtful axiom of reducibility, actually manages to solve both syntactic and semantic paradoxes at the expense of rendering the logicist project suspect and introducing much complexity in the PM system. Philosopher and logician F.P. Ramsey would later simplify the theory of types arguing that there was no need to solve both semantic and syntactic paradoxes in order to provide a foundation for mathematics. The philosopher and logician George Boolos discusses the power of the PM system in the preface to his Logic, logic & logic, stating that it is powerful enough to derive most classical mathematics, equating the power of PM to that of Z, a weaker form of set theory than ZFC (Zermelo-Fraenkel Set theory with Choice). In fact, ZFC actually does circumvent Russell's paradox by restricting the comprehension axiom to already existing sets by the use of subset axioms.
Russell wrote (in Portraits from Memory, 1956) of his reaction to Gödel's 'Theorems of Undecidability':
Evidence of Russell's influence on Wittgenstein can be seen throughout the Tractatus
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. It was an ambitious project: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science...
, which Russell was instrumental in having published. Russell also helped to secure Wittgenstein's doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
and a faculty position at Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, along with several fellowships along the way.
However, as previously stated, he came to disagree with Wittgenstein's later linguistic and analytic approach to philosophy dismissing it as "trivial", while Wittgenstein came to think of Russell as "superficial and glib", particularly in his popular writings. However, Norman Malcolm tells us in his recollections of Wittgenstein that Wittgenstein showed a deference towards Russell such as he never saw him show towards any one, and even went so far as to reprimand students of his who criticized Russell. As Ray Monk relates in his biography of Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein used to say that Russell's books should be bound in two covers, those dealing with mathematical philosophy in blue, and every student of philosophy should read them, while those dealing with popular subjects should be bound in red and no one should be allowed to read them.
Russell's influence is also evident in the work of Alfred J. Ayer
Alfred Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer was a British philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic and The Problem of Knowledge ....
, Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
, Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church was an American mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, Church–Turing thesis, Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem.-Life:Alonzo Church...
, Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...
, David Kaplan
David Kaplan (philosopher)
David Benjamin Kaplan is an American philosopher and logician teaching at UCLA. His philosophical work focuses on logic, philosophical logic, modality, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. He is best known for his work on demonstratives, on propositions, and on reference in...
, Saul Kripke
Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
, Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
, W. V. Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...
, John R. Searle, and a number of other philosophers and logicians.
Some see Russell's influence as mostly negative, primarily those who have criticized Russell's emphasis on science and logic. Russell often characterized his moral and political writings as lying outside the scope of philosophy, but Russell's admirers and detractors are often more acquainted with his pronouncements on social and political matters, or what some (e.g., biographer Ray Monk
Ray Monk
Ray Monk is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, where he has taught since 1992.He won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the 1991 Duff Cooper Prize for Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. His interests lie in the philosophy of mathematics, the history of...
) have called his "journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
," than they are with his technical, philosophical work. There is a marked tendency to conflate these matters, and to judge Russell the philosopher on what he himself would definitely consider to be his non-philosophical opinions. Russell often cautioned people to make this distinction. Beginning in the 1920s, Russell wrote frequently for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
on changing morals, disarmament
Disarmament
Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms...
and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
. In 1965, he wrote that the magazine "...has been one of the few voices which has been heard on behalf of individual liberty and social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
consistently throughout its existence."
Russell left a large assortment of writing. From his adolescent years, he wrote about 3,000 words a day, with relatively few corrections; his first draft nearly always was his last, even on the most complex, technical matters. His previously unpublished work is an immense treasure trove, and scholars continue to gain new insights into Russell's thought.
Selected bibliography of Russell's books
This is a selected bibliography of Russell's books in English sorted by year of first publication.- 1896, German Social Democracy, London: Longmans, Green.
- 1897, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, Cambridge: At the University Press.
- 1900, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, Cambridge: At the University Press.
- 1903, The Principles of MathematicsThe Principles of MathematicsThe Principles of Mathematics is a book written by Bertrand Russell in 1903. In it he presented his famous paradox and argued his thesis that mathematics and logic are identical....
The Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge: At the University Press. - 1905 On DenotingOn Denoting"On Denoting", written by Bertrand Russell, is one of the most significant and influential philosophical essays of the 20th century. It was published in the philosophy journal Mind in 1905; then reprinted, in both a special 2005 anniversary issue of the same journal and in Russell's Logic and...
, Mind vol. 14, NS, ISSN: 00264425, Basil Blackwell - 1910, Philosophical Essays, London: Longmans, Green.
- 1910–1913, Principia MathematicaPrincipia MathematicaThe Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913...
(with Alfred North WhiteheadAlfred North WhiteheadAlfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
), 3 vols., Cambridge: At the University Press. - 1912, The Problems of PhilosophyThe Problems of PhilosophyThe Problems of Philosophy is one of Bertrand Russell's attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy...
, London: Williams and Norgate. - 1914, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy, Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing.
- 1916, Principles of Social Reconstruction, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1916, Justice in War-time, Chicago: Open Court.
- 1917, Political Ideals, New York: The Century Co.
- 1918, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, London: Longmans, Green.
- 1918, Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1919, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin, (ISBN 0-415-09604-9 for Routledge paperback) (Copy at Archive.org).
- 1920, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, London: George Allen & Unwin
- 1921, The Analysis of Mind, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1922, The Problem of China, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1923, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (in collaboration with Dora Russell), London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1923, The ABC of Atoms, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
- 1924, Icarus, or the Future of Science, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
- 1925, The ABC of Relativity, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
- 1925, What I BelieveWhat I Believe"What I Believe" is the title of two essays espousing humanism, by Bertrand Russell and by E. M. Forster , respectively.Several other authors have also written works with the same title, alluding to either or both of these essays....
, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. - 1926, On Education, Especially in Early Childhood, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1927, The Analysis of Matter, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
- 1927, An Outline of Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1927, Why I Am Not a ChristianWhy I Am Not a ChristianWhy I Am Not a Christian is a 1927 essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell hailed by The Independent as "devastating in its use of cold logic", and listed in the New York Public Library's list of the most influential books of the 20th century....
, London: Watts. - 1927, Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell, New York: Modern Library.
- 1928, Sceptical Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1929, Marriage and Morals, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1930, The Conquest of Happiness, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1931, The Scientific Outlook, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1932, Education and the Social Order, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1934, Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1935, In Praise of Idleness, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1935, Religion and Science, London: Thornton Butterworth.
- 1936, Which Way to Peace?, London: Jonathan Cape.
- 1937, The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley (with Patricia RussellPatricia Russell (nee Spence)Patricia Russell, , was the third wife of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a significant contributor to Russell's work, History of Western Philosophy....
), 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press. - 1938, Power: A New Social AnalysisPower: A New Social AnalysisPower: A New Social Analysis is a work in social philosophy written by Bertrand Russell. Power, for Russell, is one's ability to achieve goals. In particular, Russell has in mind social power, that is, power over people.The volume contains a number of arguments. However, four themes have a central...
, London: George Allen & Unwin. - 1940, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- 1946, A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present DayHistory of Western Philosophy (Russell)A History of Western Philosophy by the philosopher Bertrand Russell is a conspectus of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century. Although criticised for its over-generalization and its omissions, particularly from the post-Cartesian period, it was a popular...
, New York: Simon and Schuster. - 1948, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1949, Authority and the Individual, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1950, Unpopular Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1951, New Hopes for a Changing World, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1952, The Impact of Science on Society, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1953, Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1954, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1954, Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1956, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1956, Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950 (edited by Robert C. Marsh), London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1957, Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (edited by Paul Edwards), London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1958, Understanding History and Other Essays, New York: Philosophical Library.
- 1959, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1959, My Philosophical DevelopmentMy Philosophical DevelopmentMy Philosophical Development is a book written by Bertrand Russell where he is summing up his philosophical beliefs and how they have changed during his life....
, London: George Allen & Unwin. - 1959, Wisdom of the West ("editor", Paul Foulkes), London: Macdonald.
- 1960, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company.
- 1961, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (edited by R.E. Egner and L.E. Denonn), London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1961, Fact and Fiction, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1961, Has Man a Future?, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1963, Essays in Skepticism, New York: Philosophical Library.
- 1963, Unarmed Victory, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1965, On the Philosophy of Science (edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr.), Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
- 1967, Russell's Peace Appeals (edited by Tsutomu Makino and Kazuteru Hitaka), Japan: Eichosha's New Current Books.
- 1967, War Crimes in Vietnam, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1967–1969, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin.
- 1969, Dear Bertrand Russell… A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950–1968 (edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils), London: George Allen and Unwin.
Note: This is a mere sampling, for Russell also wrote many pamphlets, introductions, articles and letters to the editor. His works also can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, perhaps most notably The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University
McMaster University
McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
began publishing in 1983. This collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works is now up to 16 volumes, and many more are forthcoming. An additional three volumes catalogue just his bibliography. The Russell Archives at McMaster University
McMaster University
McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
also have more than 30,000 letters that he wrote.
Russell
- 1900, Sur la logique des relations avec des applications à la théorie des séries, Rivista di matematica 7: 115–148.
- 1901, On the Notion of Order, Mind (n.s.) 10: 35–51.
- 1902, (with Alfred North WhiteheadAlfred North WhiteheadAlfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
), On Cardinal Numbers, American Journal of Mathematics 23: 367–384.
Secondary references
- Ivor Grattan-GuinnessIvor Grattan-GuinnessIvor Grattan-Guinness, born 23 June 1941, in Bakewell, in England, is a historian of mathematics and logic.He gained his Bachelor degree as a Mathematics Scholar at Wadham College, Oxford, got an M.Sc in Mathematical Logic and the Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics in 1966...
, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton University Press.
Books about Russell's philosophy
- Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, edited by A. D. Irvine, 4 volumes, London: Routledge, 1999. Consists of essays on Russell's work by many distinguished philosophers.
- Bertrand Russell, by John Slater, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994.
- Bertrand Russell's Ethics. by Michael K. Potter, Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2006. A clear and accessible explanation of Russell's moral philosophy.
- The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by P.A. Schilpp, Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944.
- Russell, by A. J. Ayer, London: Fontana, 1972. ISBN 0-00-632965-9. A lucid summary exposition of Russell's thought.
- The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem, by Celia GreenCelia GreenCelia Elizabeth Green is a British writer on philosophical skepticism, twentieth-century thought, and psychology.- Biography :...
. Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2003. ISBN 0-9536772-1-4 Contains a sympathetic analysis of Russell's views on causalityCausalityCausality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
. - The Ethical Philosophy of Bertrand Russell by Dr. Ramendra, New York: Vantage Press,1993. ISBN 0-533-09424-0
- Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship, by Nicholas Griffin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Biographical books
- Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist, by John LewisJohn Lewis (philosopher)John Lewis was a British Unitarian minister and Marxist philosopher and author of many works on philosophy, anthropology, and religion....
(1968) - Bertrand Russell and His World, by Ronald W. Clark (1981) ISBN 0-500-13070-1
External links
Writings available online- "Mysticism" (1961)
- "A Free Man's Worship" (1903)
- "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?" (1947)
- "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?" 1930
- "Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind" (1950)
- "In Praise of Idleness" (1932)
- "What Desires Are Politically Important?" (1950)
- Political Ideals (1917)
- The Problems of Philosophy
- Proposed Roads to Freedom (1918)
- "16 Questions on the Assassination" (of President Kennedy)
- The Analysis Of Mind
- What is an Agnostic?
- Why I am not a Christian
- The Ethics of War (1915)
- Principia Mathematica (1910)
- "The Elements of Ethics" (1910)
- The Principles of Mathematics (1903)
- An essay on the foundations of geometry
- From: www.archive.org
- History of Western Philosophy (1946)
- My Philosophical Development (1959)
- Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956)
- Unpopular Essays (1950)
- Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1920)
- The Scientific Outlook (1954)
- An Outline of Philosophy (1951)
- Our Knowledge of the External World (1914)
- Legitimacy Versus Industrialism 1814–1848 (1935)
- Authority and the Individual (1949)
- Education and the Social Order (1932)
- Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories (1954)
- Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel (1917)
- Justice in Wartime (1917)
- Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1917)
Audio
- Bertrand Russell Audio Archive
- In Praise of Idleness free mp3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
recitation of Russell's essay of the same name, from the Audio Anarchy project
Other
- Pembroke Lodge — childhood home and museum
- The Bertrand Russell Society — a member organisation of the International Humanist and Ethical UnionInternational Humanist and Ethical UnionThe International Humanist and Ethical Union is an umbrella organisation embracing humanist, atheist, rationalist, secular, skeptic, freethought and Ethical Culture organisations worldwide. Founded in Amsterdam in 1952, the IHEU is a democratic union of more than 100 member organizations in 40...
- The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly
- The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
- Bertrand Russell in Japan
- Biography and quotes of Bertrand Russell
- Russell Photo Gallery
- Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery
- The Bertrand Russell Archives
- Resource list
- The First Reith Lecture given by Russell (Real Audio)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Nobel Prize
- Lecture about 1905, the philosophical landscale of Einstein in which Russell was central