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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (b.1872 - d.1970), 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. He is also usually credited with being
one of the two most important logicians of the twentieth century,
the other being Kurt Gödel.
Over the course of his long career, Russell made significant contributions,
not just to philosophy, but to a range of other subjects as well.
Many of Russell's writings on a wide variety of topics (including
education, ethics, politics, history, religion and popular science)
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.
For an excellent short introduction to Russell's life, work and
influence the reader is encouraged to consult John Slater's accessible
and informative Bertrand Russell (Bristol: Thoemmes,
1994).
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. His 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. His 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
in connection with anti-war protests.
- (1918) Imprisoned for six months in connection with 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 a chronology of Russell's major publications, consult the
section below entitled Russell's Writings.
For more detailed information about Russell's life, the reader
is encouraged to consult Russell's four autobiographical volumes,
My Philosophical Development (London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1959) and The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
(3 vols, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967, 1968, 1969).
Other excellent sources of biographical information include C.D.
Broad's "Bertrand Russell, as Philosopher" (Bulletin
of the London Mathematical Society, 5 (1973), 328-341),
Ronald Clark's The Life of Bertrand Russell (London:
J. Cape, 1975), R.O. Gandy's "Bertrand Russell, as Mathematician"
(Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, 5 (1973),
342-348), Georg Kreisel's "Bertrand Arthur William Russell,
Earl Russell: 1872-1970" (Biographical Memoirs of Fellows
of the Royal Society, 19 (1973), 583-620), Ray Monk's Bertrand
Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (London: J. Cape, 1996),
and John Slater's Bertrand Russell (Bristol: Thoemmes,
1994).
Russell's contributions to logic and to the philosophy and 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 introduction of the theory
of types, and his refining of the first-order predicate calculus.
Russell discovered the paradox which bears his name in 1901, while
working on his Principles of Mathematics (1903).
The paradox arises in connection with the set of all sets which
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 introduction
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 which formalized
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 which 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, etc.).
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. Thus, 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". The theory of types itself admitted
of two versions, the "simple theory" and the "ramified
theory". Although first introduced in 1903, the theory finds
its mature expression in Russell's 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). The theory later came under attack for being
both too weak and too strong. For some, it 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 which lessened the vicious circle principle's scope of
application, but which many claimed was too ad hoc to be
justified philosophically.
Of equal significance during this same period was Russell's defense
of logicism, the theory that mathematics was in some important
sense reducible to logic. First defended in his Principles
of Mathematics, and later in greater detail in Principia
Mathematica, Russell's logicism consisted of two main theses.
The first is 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 is 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 on geometry 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).
In much the same way that Russell used logic in an attempt to
clarify issues in the foundations of mathematics, he also used
it 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 Russell's long-standing
aim of discovering "how much we can be said to know and with
what degree of certainty or doubtfulness". More than this,
though, Russell's various contributions were also unified by views
about the centrality of logic and about the importance of scientific
knowledge and its underlying methodology. In fact, Russell often
claimed that he had more confidence in his philosophical/scientific
methodology than in any particular philosophical conclusion.
Russell's conception of philosophy arose in part from his idealist
origins. This is so even though he believed that his "one,
true revolution" in philosophy came with 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
idealism and his Kantian methodology in favour of a pluralistic
realism. Emerging "from the bath of German idealism"
which he had encountered as a student at Cambridge, Russell became
famous for his defense 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", such as 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.
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),
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 the philosopher 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
(
x)
respectively -- we will also discover other ontologically 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" methodology
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") was assumed to refer 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. While logically proper names (words
such as "this" or "that" which refer to sensations
of which an agent is immediately aware) do have referents associated
with them, descriptive phrases (such as "the smallest number
less than e") should be viewed a collection of quantifiers
(such as "all" and "some") and propositional
functions (such as "x is a number"). As such,
they are not to be viewed as referring terms but, rather, as "incomplete
symbols". In other words, they should be viewed as symbols
which take on meaning within appropriate contexts, but which are
meaningless in isolation.
Thus, in the sentence
(1) The present King of France is bald,
the definite description "The present King of France"
plays a role quite different from that of a proper name such as
"Scott" in the sentence
(2) Scott is bald.
Letting "K" abbreviate the predicate "is
a present King of France" and "B" abbreviate
the predicate "is bald", Russell assigns sentence (1)
the logical form
(1' ) There is an x such that (i) Kx, (ii) for any
y, if Ky then y = x, and (iii) Bx.
In the notation of the predicate calculus, the logical form of
(1') is
In contrast, he assigns sentence (2) the logical form
(2' ) Bs.
This distinction between various logical forms allows Russell
to explain three important puzzles. The first concerns the operation
of the Law of Excluded Middle and how it relates to denoting terms.
According to one reading of the Law of Excluded Middle, it must
be the case that either "The present King of France is bald"
is true or "The present King of France is not bald"
is true. But if so, both sentences appear to entail the existence
of a present King of France, clearly an undesirable result. Russell's
analysis shows how this conclusion can be avoided. By appealing
to analysis (1' ), it follows that there is a way to deny (1)
without being committed to the existence of a present King of
France.
The second puzzle concerns the Law of Identity as it operates
in (so-called) opaque contexts. Even though "Scott is the
author of Waverley" is true, it does not follow
that the two referring terms "Scott" and "the author
of Waverley" are interchangeable in all contexts.
Thus although "George wanted to know whether Scott was the
the author of Waverley" is true, "George
wanted to know whether Scott was Scott" is false. Russell's
distinction between the logical forms associated with the use
of proper names and definite descriptions shows why this may be
so.
The third puzzle relates to true negative existential claims,
such as the claim that "The golden mountain does not exist".
Here, once again, by treating definite descriptions as having
a logical form distinct from that of proper names, Russell is
able to give an account of how a speaker may be committed to the
truth of a negative existential without also being committed to
the belief that the subject term has reference.
Russell's emphasis upon logical analysis also had consequences for
his metaphysics. In response to the traditional problem of the
external world which, it is claimed, can be known only by inference,
Russell developed his famous 1910 distinction between "knowledge
by acquaintance and knowledge by description". He then went on,
in his 1918 lectures on logical atomism, to argue that the world
itself consists of a complex of logical atoms (such as "little
patches of colour") and their properties. Together they form the
atomic facts which in turn are combined to form logically complex
objects. What we normally take to be inferred entities (for example,
enduring physical objects) are then thought of as being "logical
constructions" formed from the immediately given entities of
sensation, viz., "sensibilia". It is only these latter
entities which are known non-inferentially and with
certainty. According to Russell, the philosopher's job is then to
discover a logically ideal language which will exhibit the true nature
of the world in such a way that the speaker will not be misled by the
casual surface structure of natural language. Just as atomic facts
(the association of universals with an appropriate number of
individuals) may be combined into molecular facts in the world itself,
such a language would allow for the description of such combinations
using logical connectives such as "and" and
"or". In addition to atomic and molecular facts, Russell
also held that general facts (facts about "all" of
something) were needed to complete the picture of the world.
Famously, he vacillated on whether negative facts were also required.
Russell's most important writings relating to these topics include
not only "On Denoting" (1905), but also his "Knowledge
by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description" (1910), "The
Philosophy of Logical Atomism" (1918, 1919), "Logical
Atomism" (1924), The Analysis of Mind (1921),
and The Analysis of Matter (1927).
Russell's social influence stems from three main sources: his
long-standing social activism, his many writings on the social
and political issues of his day, and his popularizations of technical
writings in philosophy and the natural sciences.
Among Russell's many popularizations are his two best selling
works, The Problems of Philosophy (1912) and A
History of Western Philosophy (1945). Both of these books,
as well as his numerous but less famous books popularizing science,
have done much to educate and inform generations of general readers.
Naturally enough, Russell saw a link between education, in this
broad sense, and social progress. In Russell's words, "The
desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are
the two great engines of progress." At the same time, Russell
is also famous for suggesting that a widespread reliance upon
evidence, rather than upon superstition, would have enormous social
consequences: "I wish to propose for the reader's favourable
consideration," says Russell, "a doctrine which may,
I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine
in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition
when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true."
Still, Russell is best known in many circles as a result of his
campaigns against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and against
western involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1950s and 1960s.
However, Russell's social activism stretches back at least as
far as 1910, when he published his Anti-Suffragist Anxieties,
and to 1916, when he was convicted and fined in connection with
anti-war protests during World War I. Following his conviction,
he was also dismissed from his post at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Two years later, he was convicted a second time. The result was
six months in prison. Russell also ran unsuccessfully for Parliament
(in 1907, 1922, and 1923) and, together with his second wife,
founded and operated an experimental school during the late 1920s
and early 1930s.
Although he became the third Earl Russell upon the death of his
brother in 1931, Russell's radicalism continued to make him a
controversial figure well through middle-age. While teaching in
the United States in the late 1930s, he was offered a teaching
appointment at City College, New York. The appointment was revoked
following a large number of public protests and a 1940 judicial
decision which found him morally unfit to teach at the College.
In 1954 he delivered his famous "Man's Peril" broadcast
on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests. A year later,
together with Albert Einstein, he released the Russell-Einstein
Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons. In 1957
he was a prime organizer of the first Pugwash Conference, which
brought together a large number of scientists concerned about
the nuclear issue. He became the founding president of the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 and was once again imprisoned
in connection with anti-nuclear protests in 1961. The media coverage
surrounding his conviction only served to enhance Russell's reputation
and to further inspire many of the idealistic youth who were sympathetic
to his anti-war and anti-nuclear protests.
During these controversial years Russell also wrote many of the
books which brought him to the attention of popular audiences.
These included his Principles of Social Reconstruction
(1916), A Free Man's Worship (1923), On Education
(1926), Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), Marriage
and Morals (1929), The Conquest of Happiness
(1930), The Scientific Outlook (1931), and Power:
A New Social Analysis (1938).
Upon being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, Russell
took the opportunity to emphasize, once again, themes related
to his social activism, using his acceptance speech to warn of
the dangers of nuclear war.
Russell wrote approximately 55 books. In addition, hundreds of
his articles, both in philosophy and on other topics, have been
published in over 40 anthologies devoted to his writings. The
most complete listing of his publications is to be found in A
Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (3 vols, London: Routledge,
1994), by Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja. A less detailed, but
still comprehensive, list appears in Paul Arthur Schilpp's The
Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (3rd ed., New York: Harper
and Row, 1963).
- (1905) "On Denoting", Mind, 14, 479-493.
Repr. in Russell, Bertrand, Essays in Analysis, London:
Allen & Unwin, 1973, 103-119.
- (1908) "Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of
Types", American Journal of Mathematics, 30,
222-262. Repr. in Russell, Bertrand, Logic and Knowledge,
London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, 59-102, and in van Heijenoort, Jean,
From Frege to Gödel, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1967, 152-182.
- (1910) "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by
Description", Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 11, 108-128. Repr. in Russell, Bertrand,
Mysticism and Logic, London: Allen & Unwin, 1963,
152-167.
- (1912) "On the Relations of Universals and Particulars",
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 12, 1-24.
Repr. in Russell, Bertrand, Logic and Knowledge, London:
Allen & Unwin, 1956, 105-124.
- (1918, 1919) "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism",
Monist, 28, 495-527; 29, 32-63, 190-222, 345-380.
Repr. in Russell, Bertrand, Logic and Knowledge, London:
Allen & Unwin, 1956, 177-281.
- (1924) "Logical Atomism", in Muirhead, J.H.,
Contemporary British Philosophers, London: Allen &
Unwin, 1924, 356-383. Repr. in Russell, Bertrand, Logic and
Knowledge, London: Allen & Unwin, 1956, 323-343.
- (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 Mathematics, Cambridge: At
the University Press.
- (1910, 1912, 1913) (with Alfred North Whitehead) Principia
Mathematica, 3 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Second edition, 1925 (Vol. 1), 1927 (Vols 2, 3). Abridged as
Principia Mathematica to *56, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1962.
- (1912) The Problems of Philosophy, London: Williams
and Norgate; New York: Henry Holt and Company.
- (1914) Our Knowledge of the External World, Chicago
and London: The Open Court Publishing Company.
- (1916) Principles of Social Reconstruction, London:
George Allen & Unwin. Repr. as Why Men Fight, New
York: The Century Company, 1917.
- (1917) Political Ideals, New York: The Century
Company.
- (1919) Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy,
London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company.
- (1921) The Analysis of Mind, London: George Allen
& Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company.
- (1923) A Free Man's Worship, Portland, Maine: Thomas
Bird Mosher. Repr. as What Can A Free Man Worship?,
Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1927.
- (1926) On Education, Especially in Early Childhood,
London: George Allen & Unwin. Repr. as Education and the
Good Life, New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926. Abridged as
Education of Character, New York: Philosophical Library,
1961.
- (1927) The Analysis of Matter, London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner; New York: Harcourt, Brace.
- (1927) An Outline of Philosophy, London: George Allen
& Unwin. Repr. as Philosophy, New York: W.W. Norton,
1927.
- (1927) Why I Am Not a Christian, London: Watts, New
York: The Truth Seeker Company.
- (1929) Marriage and Morals, London: George Allen
& Unwin; New York: Horace Liveright.
- (1930) The Conquest of Happiness, London: George
Allen & Unwin; New York: Horace Liveright.
- (1931) The Scientific Outlook, London: George Allen
& Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
- (1938) Power: A New Social Analysis, London: George
Allen & Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
- (1940) An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, London:
George Allen & Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
- (1945) A History of Western Philosophy, New York:
Simon and Schuster; London: George Allen & Unwin, 1946.
- (1948) Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, London:
George Allen & Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
- (1949) Authority and the Individual, London: George
Allen & Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
- (1949) The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,
Minneapolis, Minnesota: Department of Philosophy, University of
Minnesota. Repr. as Russell's Logical Atomism, Oxford:
Fontana/Collins, 1972.
- (1954) Human Society in Ethics and Politics, London:
George Allen & Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
- (1959) My Philosophical Development, London: George
Allen & Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
- (1967, 1968, 1969) The Autobiography of Bertrand
Russell, 3 vols, London: George Allen & Unwin; Boston and
Toronto: Little Brown and Company (Vols 1 and 2), New York: Simon and
Schuster (Vol. 3).
- (1910) Philosophical Essays, London: Longmans, Green.
- (1918) Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, London
and New York: Longmans, Green. Repr. as A Free Man's Worship and
Other Essays, London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976.
- (1928) Sceptical Essays, London: George Allen &
Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
- (1935) In Praise of Idleness, London: George Allen
& Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton.
- (1950) Unpopular Essays, London: George Allen &
Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
- (1956) Logic and Knowledge: Essays, 1901-1950,
London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company.
- (1956) Portraits From Memory and Other Essays,
London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: Simon and Schuster.
- (1957) Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion
and Related Subjects, London: George Allen & Unwin; New
York: Simon and Schuster.
- (1961) The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell,
1903-1959, London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: Simon
and Schuster.
- (1969) Dear Bertrand Russell, London: George Allen
& Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
- (1973) Essays in Analysis, London: George Allen &
Unwin.
- (1992) The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell,
London: Penguin Press.
The Bertrand Russell Editorial Project is currently in the process
of publishing Russell's Collected Papers. When complete,
these volumes will bring together all of Russell's writings, excluding
his previously published monographs and his correspondence.
In Print
- Vol. 1: Cambridge Essays, 1888-99, London,
Boston, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1983.
- Vol. 2: Philosophical Papers, 1896-99, London and New
York: Routledge, 1990.
- Vol. 3: Toward the Principles of Mathematics, London
and New York: Routledge, 1993.
- Vol. 4: Foundations of Logic, 1903-05, London and New
York: Routledge, 1994.
- Vol. 6: Logical and Philosophical Papers, 1909-13,
London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
- Vol. 7: Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript,
London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1984.
- Vol. 8: The Philosophy of Logical Atomism and Other Essays,
1914-19, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1986.
- Vol. 9: Essays on Language, Mind and Matter, 1919-26,
London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
- Vol. 10: Philosophical Papers, 1927-43, London and
New York: Routledge.
- Vol. 11: Philosophical Papers, 1944-65, London and
New York: Routledge.
- Vol. 12: Contemplation and Action, 1902-14, London,
Boston, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985.
- Vol. 13: Prophecy and Dissent, 1914-16, London: Unwin
Hyman, 1988.
- Vol. 14: Pacifism and Revolution, 1916-18, London
and New York: Routledge, 1995.
Planned and Forthcoming
- Vol. 5: Philosophical Papers, 1906-08.
- Vol. 15: Uncertain Roads to Freedom: Russia and China,
1919-1922.
- Vol. 16: Labour and Internationalism, 1922-24.
- Vol. 17: Behaviourism and Education, 1925-28.
- Vol. 18: Science, Sex and Society, 1929-32.
- Vol. 19: Fascism and Other Depression Legacies, 1933-36.
- Vol. 20: The Man Who Stuck Pins in His Wife, and Other
Essays, 1936-39.
- Vol. 21: The Problems of Democracy, 1940-44.
- Vol. 22: Civilization and the Bomb, 1944-49.
- Vol. 23: Respectability At Last, 1949-53.
- Vol. 24: Man's Peril, 1954-57.
- Vol. 25: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1958-60.
- Vol. 26: A New Plan for Peace and Other Essays, 1960-64.
- Vol. 27: The Vietnam Campaign, 1965-70.
- Vol. 28: Newly Discovered Papers.
- Vol. 29: Newly Discovered Papers.
- Vol. 30: Index.
No comprehensive bibliography of the secondary literature surrounding
Russell exists to date. A selected list (of approximately 1,000
entires) is to appear in A.D. Irvine (ed.), Bertrand Russell:
Critical Assessments (4 vols, London: Routledge, forthcoming).
- Broad, C.D. (1973) "Bertrand Russell, as
Philosopher", Bulletin of the London Mathematical
Society, 5, 328-341.
- Carnap, Rudolf (1931) "The Logicist Foundations of
Mathematics", Erkenntnis, 2, 91-105. Repr. in
Benacerraf, Paul, and Hilary Putnam (eds), Philosophy of
Mathematics, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983, 41-52; in Klemke, E.D. (ed.), Essays on Bertrand
Russell, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, 341-354;
and in Pears, David F. (ed.), Bertrand Russell: A Collection of
Critical Essays, Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972,
175-191.
- Church, Alonzo (1976) "Comparison of Russell's Resolution of
the Semantical Antinomies With That of Tarski", Journal of
Symbolic Logic, 41, 747-760.
- Gandy, R.O. (1973)
"Bertrand Russell, as Mathematician", Bulletin of the
London Mathematical Society, 5, 342-348.
- Gödel, Kurt (1944) "Russell's Mathematical Logic",
in Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.), The Philosophy of Bertrand
Russell, 3rd ed., New York: Tudor, 1951, 123-153. Repr. in
Benacerraf, Paul, and Hilary Putnam (eds), Philosophy of
Mathematics, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983, 447-469; and in Pears, David F. (ed.) (1972) Bertrand
Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City, New
York: Anchor Books, 192-226.
- Hylton, Peter W. (1990) "Logic in Russell's Logicism",
in Bell, David, and Neil Cooper (eds), The Analytic Tradition:
Philosophical Quarterly Monographs, Vol. 1, Cambridge:
Blackwell, 137-172.
- Irvine, A.D. (1989) "Epistemic Logicism and Russell's
Regressive Method", Philosophical Studies, 55,
303-327.
- Kaplan, David (1970) "What is Russell's Theory of
Descriptions?", in Yourgrau, Wolfgang, and Allen D. Breck, (eds),
Physics, Logic, and History, New York: Plenum,
277-288. Repr. in Pears, David F. (ed.), Bertrand Russell: A
Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City, New York: Anchor
Books, 1972, 227-244.
- Lycan, William (1981) "Logical Atomism and Ontological
Atoms", Synthese, 46, 207-229.
- Monro, D.H. (1960) "Russell's Moral Theories",
Philosophy, 35, 30-50. Repr. in Pears, David F. (ed.),
Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden
City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, 325-355.
- Putnam, Hilary (1967) "The Thesis that Mathematics is
Logic", in Schoenman, Ralph (ed.), Bertrand Russell:
Philosopher of the Century, London: Allen & Unwin,
273-303. Repr. in Putnam, Hilary, Mathematics, Matter and
Method, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975, 12-42.
- Quine, W.V. (1938) "On the Theory of Types",
Journal of Symbolic Logic, 3, 125-139.
- Ramsey, F.P. (1926) "Mathematical Logic",
Mathematical Gazette, 13, 185-194. Repr. in Ramsey, Frank
Plumpton, The Foundations of Mathematics, London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1931, 62-81; in Ramsey, Frank Plumpton,
Foundations, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978,
213-232; and in Ramsey, Frank Plumpton, Philosophical
Papers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 225-244.]
- Schultz, Bart (1992) "Bertrand Russell in Ethics and
Politics", Ethics, 102, 594-634.
- Strawson, Peter F. (1950) "On Referring",
Mind, 59, 320-344. Repr. in Flew, Anthony (ed.),
Essays in Conceptual Analysis, London: Macmillan, 1960,
21-52, and in Klemke, E.D. (ed.), Essays on Bertrand
Russell, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, 147-172.
- Weitz, Morris (1944) "Analysis and the Unity of Russell's
Philosophy", in Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.), The Philosophy
of Bertrand Russell, 3rd ed., New York: Tudor, 1951, 55-121.
- Blackwell, Kenneth (1985) The Spinozistic Ethics of Bertrand
Russell, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- Blackwell, Kenneth, and Harry Ruja (1994) A Bibliography of
Bertrand Russell, 3 vols, London: Routledge.
- Chomsky, Noam (1971) Problems of Knowledge and Freedom: The
Russell Lectures, New York: Vintage.
- Clark, Ronald William (1975) The Life of Bertrand
Russell, London: J. Cape.
- Clark, Ronald William (1981) Bertrand Russell and His
World, London: Thames and Hudson.
- Dewey, John, and Horace M. Kallen (eds) (1941) The Bertrand
Russell Case, New York: Viking.
- Eames, Elizabeth R. (1969) Bertrand Russell's Theory of
Knowledge, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- Eames, Elizabeth R. (1989) Bertrand Russell's Dialogue with
his Contemporaries, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press.
- Feinberg, Barry, and Ronald Kasrils (eds) (1969) Dear
Bertrand Russell, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- Feinberg, Barry, and Ronald Kasrils (1973, 1983) Bertrand
Russell's America, 2 vols, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- Grattan-Guinness, I. (1977) Dear Russell, Dear Jourdain: A
Commentary on Russell's Logic, Based on His Correspondence with Philip
Jourdain, New York: Columbia University Press.
- Griffin, Nicholas (1991) Russell's Idealist
Apprenticeship, Oxford: Clarendon.
- Hager, Paul J. (1994) Continuity and Change in the
Development of Russell's Philosophy, Dordrecht: Nijhoff.
- Hardy, Godfrey H. (1942) Bertrand Russell and
Trinity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
- Hylton, Peter W. (1990) Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence
of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon.
- Irvine, A.D. (ed.) (forthcoming) Bertrand Russell: Critical
Assessments, 4 vols, London: Routledge.
- Irvine, A.D., and G.A. Wedeking (eds) (1993) Russell and
Analytic Philosophy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Jager, Ronald (1972) The Development of Bertrand Russell's
Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin.
- Klemke, E.D. (ed.) (1970) Essays on Bertrand Russell,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
- Monk, Ray (1996) Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of
Solitude, London: J. Cape.
- Monk, Ray, and Anthony Palmer (eds) (1996) Bertrand Russell
and the Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Bristol: Thoemmes
Press.
- Moorehead, Caroline (1992) Bertrand Russell, New
York: Viking.
- Nakhnikian, George (ed.) (1974) Bertrand Russell's
Philosophy, London: Duckworth.
- Park, Joe (1963) Bertrand Russell on Education,
Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
- Patterson, Wayne (1993) Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of
Logical Atomism, New York: Lang.
- Pears, David F. (1967) Bertrand Russell and the British
Tradition in Philosophy, London: Collins.
- Pears, David F. (ed.) (1972) Bertrand Russell: A Collection
of Critical Essays, New York: Doubleday.
- Roberts, George W. (ed.) (1979) Bertrand Russell Memorial
Volume, London: Allen & Unwin.
- Rodriguez-Consuegra, Francisco A. (1991) The Mathematical
Philosophy of Bertrand Russell: Origins and Development, Basel:
Birkhauser Verlag.
- Ryan, Alan (1988) Bertrand Russell: A Political Life,
New York: Hill and Wang.
- Savage, C. Wade, and C. Anthony Anderson (eds) (1989)
Rereading Russell: Essays on Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics and
Epistemology, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.) (1944) The Philosophy of Bertrand
Russell, Chicago: Northwestern University; 3rd ed., New York:
Harper and Row, 1963.
- Schoenman, Ralph (ed.) (1967) Bertrand Russell: Philosopher
of the Century, London: Allen & Unwin.
- Slater, John G. (1994) Bertrand Russell, Bristol:
Thoemmes.
- Tait, Katharine (1975) My Father Bertrand Russell,
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- Vellacott, Jo (1980) Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists in
the First World War, Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1921) Logisch-philosophische
Abhandlung. Trans. as Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,
1922.
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1956) Remarks on the Foundations of
Mathematics, Oxford: Blackwell.
- Wood, Alan (1957) Bertrand Russell: The Passionate
Sceptic, London: Allen & Unwin.
analytic philosophy |
definite descriptions |
Frege, Gottlob |
Gödel, Kurt |
knowledge by acquaintance vs. knowledge by description |
logic |
logical atomism |
logical construction |
logicism |
Moore, G. E. |
mathematics, philosophy of |
Principia Mathematica |
propositional function |
Russell's paradox |
type theory |
Whitehead, Alfred North |
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Copyright © 1995, 1997 by
A. D. Irvine
[email protected]
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P |
Q |
R |
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T |
U |
V |
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Z
Table of Contents
First published: December 7, 1995
Content last modified: December 24, 1997