Russell, Bertrand A. W.
Russell, Bertrand A. W.
(1872-) Fellow Trinity College, Cambridge, 1895; lecturer in philosophy, University of Cambridge, 1910-1916. Author of
The Philosophy of Leibniz, 1900;
The Principles of Mathematics, 1903;
Principia Mathematica (in collaboration with A. N. Whitehead), 3 vols. 1910-13, (second edition, 1925-27);
The Problems of Philosophy, 1912;
Our Knowledge of the External World, 1914;
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1918;
The Analysis of Mind, 1921;
The Analysis of Matter, 1927;
An Outline of Philosophy, 1928;
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, 1940.
Also numerous other works on philosophy, politics and education, outrageously attacked by reactionaries.
Two aspects of Russell’s work are likely to remain of permanent importance,
his major part in the twentieth century renaissance of logic,
his reiterated attempts to identify the methods of philosophy with those of the sciences.
(1) While the primary objective of Principia was to prove that pure mathematics could be derived from logic, the success of this undertaking (as to which hardly any dissenting opinion persists) is overshadowed by the importance of the techniques perfected in the course of its prosecution. Without disrespect to other pioneers in the field, it is sufficient to point out that a knowledge of the symbolic logic of Russell and Whitehead is still a necessary prerequisite for understanding contemporary studies in logic, in the foundations of mathematics, and tht philosophy of science.
(2) Flirtations with realism, neutral monism, positivism or behaviorism have never seriously interfered with Russell’s attempt to establish philosophy as a science. The emptical data being supplied by the experimental scientist, the specifically philosophical task becomes the analysis of such deliverances (with the full resources of modern logistic). Unlike certain of his followers, Russell has never been strenuously anti-metaphysical. He has never held pragmatic, still less conventional, views with regard to the nature of logic itself. And his general empirical approach has been constantly modified by rationalistic views concerning the subsistence of universals. — M.B.