Bertrand Russell
entries/russell/
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (b.1872 - d.1970) was a British philosopher, logician,
essayist, and social critic, best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic
philosophy. His most influential contributions include his defense of logicism (the view
that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic), and his theories of
definite descriptions and logical atomism. Along with G.E. Moore, Russell is generally
recognized as one of the founders of analytic philosophy. Along with Kurt Gödel, he
is also regularly credited with being one of the two most important logicians of the
twentieth century.
Over the course of his long career, Russell made significant contributions, not just to
logic and philosophy, but to a broad range of other subjects including education, history,
political theory and religious studies. In addition, many of his writings on a wide variety
of topics in both the sciences and the humanities have influenced generations of general
readers. After a life marked by controversy (including dismissals from both Trinity College,
Cambridge, and City College, New York), Russell was awarded the Order of Merit in
1949 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Also noted for his many spirited
anti-war and anti-nuclear protests, Russell remained a prominent public figure until his
death at the age of 97.
A Chronology of Russell's Life
Russell's Work in Analytic Philosophy
Russell's Social and Political Philosophy
Interested readers may also wish to listen to two sound clips of Russell speaking.
(呵呵,他的声音amusing:)
TA们的工作就是幸福的源泉, 在工作中,
TA们智力中的较高部分都已被工作所占据, TA们的情感通常
都是简单,质朴的, 所以是幸福的, 幸福的享受着工作,爱情和生活,
结果是长寿的)
A short chronology of the major events in Russell's life is as follows:
(1872) Born May 18 at Ravenscroft, Wales.
(1874) Death of mother and sister.
(1876) Death of father; Russell's grandfather, Lord John Russell (the former Prime
Minister), and grandmother succeed in overturning his father's will to win custody
of Russell and his brother.
(1878) Death of grandfather; Russell's grandmother, Lady Russell, supervises
his upbringing.
(1890) Enters Trinity College, Cambridge.
(1893) Awarded first class B.A. in Mathematics.
(1894) Completed the Moral Sciences Tripos (Part II)
(1894) Marries Alys Pearsall Smith.
(1900) Meets Peano at International Congress in Paris.
(1901) Discovers Russell's paradox.
(1902) Corresponds with Frege.
(1908) Elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
(1916) Fined 110 pounds and dismissed from Trinity College as a result
of anti-war protests.
(1918) Imprisoned for five months as a result of anti-war protests.
(1921) Divorce from Alys and marriage to Dora Black.
(1927) Opens experimental school with Dora.
(1931) Becomes the third Earl Russell upon the death of his brother.
(1935) Divorce from Dora.
(1936) Marriage to Patricia (Peter) Helen Spence.
(1940) Appointment at City College New York revoked following public
protests.
(1943) Dismissed from Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania.
(1949) Awarded the Order of Merit.
(1950) Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
(1952) Divorce from Peter and marriage to Edith Finch.
(1955) Releases Russell-Einstein Manifesto.
(1957) Organizes the first Pugwash Conference.
(1958) Becomes founding President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
(1961) Imprisoned for one week in connection with anti-nuclear protests.
(1970) Dies February 02 at Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.
For more detailed information about Russell's life, readers are encouraged to
consult Russell's four autobiographical volumes, My Philosophical Development
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959) and The Autobiography of Bertrand
Russell (3 vols, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967, 1968, 1969). In addition,
John Slater's accessible and informative Bertrand Russell (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1994)
gives an excellent short introduction to Russell's life, work and influence.
Other sources of biographical information include Ronald Clark's The Life of
Bertrand Russell (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), Ray Monk's Bertrand
Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996) and Bertrand
Russell: The Ghost of Madness (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), and the first
volume of A.D. Irvine's Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments (London:
Routledge, 1999).
For a chronology of Russell's major publications, readers are encouraged to
consult Russell's Writings below. For a more complete list see A Bibliography
of Bertrand Russell (3 vols, London: Routledge, 1994), by Kenneth Blackwell
and Harry Ruja. A less detailed, but still comprehensive, list also appears in
Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, 3rd edn (New
York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 746-803.
Finally, for a bibliography of the secondary literature surrounding Russell, see
A.D. Irvine, Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, Vol. 1 (London:
Routledge, 1999), pp. 247-312.
Russell's Work in Logic
Russell's contributions to logic and the foundations of mathematics include
his discovery of Russell's paradox, his defense of logicism (the view that
mathematics is, in some significant sense, reducible to formal logic), his
development of the theory of types, and his refining of the first-order
predicate calculus.
Russell discovered the paradox that bears his name in 1901, while working
on his Principles of Mathematics (1903). The paradox arises in connection
with the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set, if it exists,
will be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself. The paradox is
significant since, using classical logic, all sentences are entailed by a contradiction.
Russell's discovery thus prompted a large amount of work in logic, set theory, and
the philosophy and foundations of mathematics.
Russell's own response to the paradox came with the development of his theory of
types in 1903. It was clear to Russell that some restrictions needed to be placed upon
the original comprehension (or abstraction) axiom of naive set theory, the axiom that
formalizes the intuition that any coherent condition may be used to determine a set
(or class). Russell's basic idea was that reference to sets such as the set of all sets
that are not members of themselves could be avoided by arranging all sentences
into a hierarchy, beginning with sentences about individuals at the lowest level,
sentences about sets of individuals at the next lowest level, sentences about sets
of sets of individuals at the next lowest level, and so on. Using a vicious circle
principle similar to that adopted by the mathematician Henri Poincaré, and his
own so-called "no class" theory of classes, Russell was able to explain why the
unrestricted comprehension axiom fails: propositional functions, such as the
function "x is a set," may not be applied to themselves since self-application
would involve a vicious circle. On Russell's view, all objects for which a given
condition (or predicate) holds must be at the same level or of the same "type."
Although first introduced in 1903, the theory of types was further developed
by Russell in his 1908 article "Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of
Types" and in the monumental work he co-authored with
Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913). Thus
the theory admits of two versions, the "simple theory" of 1903 and the
"ramified theory" of 1908. Both versions of the theory later came under attack
for being both too weak and too strong. For some, the theory was too weak
since it failed to resolve all of the known paradoxes. For others, it was too
strong since it disallowed many mathematical definitions which, although
consistent,
violated the vicious circle principle. Russell's response was to introduce the
axiom of reducibility, an axiom that lessened the vicious circle principle's scope
of application, but which many people claimed was too ad hoc to be justified
philosophically.
Of equal significance during this period was Russell's defense of logicism, the theory
that mathematics was in some important sense reducible to logic. First defended in
his 1901 article "Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics," and then later in
greater detail in his Principles of Mathematics and in Principia Mathematica,
Russell's logicism consisted of two main theses. The first was that all mathematical
truths can be translated into logical truths or, in other words, that the vocabulary
of mathematics constitutes a proper subset of that of logic. The second was that
all mathematical proofs can be recast as logical proofs or, in other words, that the
theorems of mathematics constitute a proper subset of those of logic.
Like Gottlob Frege, Russell's basic idea for defending logicism was that numbers
may be identified with classes of classes and that number-theoretic statements may
be explained in terms of quantifiers and identity. Thus the number 1 would be
identified with the class of all unit classes, the number 2 with the class of all
two-membered classes, and so on. Statements such as "There are two books"
would be recast as statements such as "There is a book, x, and there is a book, y,
and x is not identical to y." It followed that number-theoretic operations could be
explained in terms of set-theoretic operations such as intersection, union, and
difference. In Principia Mathematica, Whitehead and Russell were able to
provide many detailed derivations of major theorems in set theory, finite and
transfinite arithmetic, and elementary measure theory. A fourth volume was
planned but never completed.
Russell's most important writings relating to these topics include not only
Principles of Mathematics (1903), "Mathematical Logic as Based on the
Theory of Types" (1908), and Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913),
but also his An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897), and
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919).
Russell's Work in Analytic Philosophy
In much the same way that Russell used logic in an attempt to clarify issues in
the foundations of mathematics, he also used logic in an attempt to clarify issues
in philosophy. As one of the founders of analytic philosophy, Russell made
significant contributions to a wide variety of areas, including metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics and political theory, as well as to the history of philosophy.
Underlying these various projects was not only Russell's use of logical analysis,
but also his long-standing aim of discovering whether, and to what extent,
knowledge is possible. "There is one great question," he writes in 1911. "
Can human beings know anything, and if so, what and how? really the most essentially philosophical of all questions."[1]
This question is
More than this, Russell's various contributions were also unified by his views
concerning both the centrality of scientific knowledge and the importance of
an underlying scientific methodology that is common to both philosophy and
science. In the case of philosophy, this methodology expressed itself through
Russell's use of logical analysis. In fact, Russell often claimed that he had
more confidence in his methodology than in any particular philosophical
conclusion.
Russell's conception of philosophy arose in part from his idealist origins.[2]
This is so, even though he believed that his one, true revolution in philosophy
came about as a result of his break from idealism. Russell saw that the idealist
doctrine of internal relations led to a series of contradictions regarding
asymmetrical (and other) relations necessary for mathematics. Thus, in 1898,
he abandoned the idealism that he had encountered as a student at Cambridge,
together with his Kantian methodology, in favour of a pluralistic realism.
As a result, he soon became famous as an advocate of the "new realism"
and for his "new philosophy of logic," emphasizing as it did the importance
of modern logic for philosophical analysis. The underlying themes of this
"revolution," including his belief in pluralism, his emphasis upon
anti-psychologism, and the importance of science, remained central to Russell's
philosophy for the remainder of his life.[3]
Russell's methodology consisted of the making and testing of hypotheses
through the weighing of evidence (hence Russell's comment that he wished
to emphasize the "scientific method" in philosophy[4]), together with a rigorous
analysis of problematic propositions using the machinery of first-order logic.
It was Russell's belief that by using the new logic of his day, philosophers
would be able to exhibit the underlying "logical form" of natural language
statements. A statement's logical form, in turn, would help philosophers
resolve problems of reference associated with the ambiguity and vagueness
of natural language. Thus, just as we distinguish three separate sense of "is"
(the is of predication, the is of identity, and the is of existence) and exhibit
these three senses by using three separate logical notations
(Px, x=y, and
significant distinctions by being aware of a sentence's correct logical form.
On Russell's view, the subject matter of philosophy is then distinguished
from that of the sciences only by the generality and the a prioricity of
philosophical statements, not by the underlying methodology of the discipline.
In philosophy, as in mathematics, Russell believed that it was by applying
logical machinery and insights that advances would be made.
Russell's most famous example of his "analytic" method concerns denoting
phrases such as descriptions and proper names. In his
Principles of Mathematics, Russell had adopted the view that every denoting
phrase (for example, "Scott," "blue," "the number two," "the golden mountain")
denoted, or referred to, an existing entity. By the time his landmark article,
"On Denoting," appeared two years later, in 1905, Russell had modified this
extreme realism and had instead become convinced that denoting phrases
need not possess a theoretical unity.
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