(1872-1970)
British philosopher, mathematician,
and Nobel laureate, whose emphasis on logical analysis influenced the course
of 20th-century philosophy.
Born in Trelleck, Wales, on May 18, 1872, Russell was educated at Trinity College,
University of Cambridge. After graduation in 1894, he traveled in France, Germany,
and the United States and was then made a fellow of Trinity College. From an
early age he developed a strong sense of social consciousness; at the same time,
he involved himself in the study of logical and mathematical questions, which
he had made his special fields and on which he was called to lecture at many
institutions throughout the world. He achieved prominence with his first major
work, The Principles of Mathematics (1902), in which he attempted to
remove mathematics from the realm of abstract philosophical notions and to give
it a precise scientific framework.
Russell then collaborated for eight years with the British philosopher and mathematician
Alfred North
Whitehead to produce the monumental work Principia Mathematica
(3 volumes, 1910-1913). This work showed that mathematics can be stated in terms
of the concepts of general logic, such as class and membership in a class. It
became a masterpiece of rational thought. Russell and Whitehead proved that
numbers can be defined as classes of a certain type, and in the process they
developed logic concepts and a logic notation that established symbolic logic
as an important specialization within the field of philosophy. In his next major
work, The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Russell borrowed from the fields
of sociology, psychology, physics, and mathematics to refute the tenets of idealism, the dominant philosophical
school of the period, which held that all objects and experiences are the product
of the intellect. Russell, a realist, believed that objects perceived by the
senses have an inherent reality independent of the mind.
II. Pacifist and Socialist
Russell condemned both sides
in World War I
(1914-1918), and for his uncompromising stand he was fined, imprisoned, and
deprived of his teaching post at Cambridge. In prison he wrote Introduction
to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), combining the two areas of knowledge
he regarded as inseparable. After the war he visited the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic, and in his book Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
(1920) he expressed his disappointment with the form of socialism practiced
there. He felt that the methods used to achieve a Communist system were intolerable
and that the results obtained were not worth the price paid.
Russell taught at Beijing University in China during 1921 and 1922. From 1928
to 1932, after he returned to England, he conducted the private, highly progressive
Beacon Hill School for young children. From 1938 to 1944 he taught at various
educational institutions in the United States. He was barred, however, from
teaching at the College of the City of New York (now City College of the City
University of New York) by the state supreme court because of his attacks on
religion in such works as What I Believe (1925) and his advocacy of sexual
freedom, expressed in Manners and Morals (1929).
Russell returned to England in 1944 and was reinstated as a fellow of Trinity
College. Although he abandoned pacifism
to support the Allied cause in World War II (1939-1945), he became an ardent
and active opponent of nuclear weapons. In 1949 he was awarded the Order of
Merit by King George VI. Russell received the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature
and was cited as "the champion of humanity and freedom of thought."
He led a movement in the late 1950s advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament
by Britain, and at the age of 89 he was imprisoned after an antinuclear demonstration.
He died on February 2, 1970.
III. Philosopher and Author
In addition to his earlier
work, Russell also made a major contribution to the development of logical positivism,
a strong philosophical movement of the 1930s and 1940s. The major Austrian philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein, at one
time Russell's student at Cambridge, was strongly influenced by his original
concept of logical atomism. In his search for the nature and limits of knowledge,
Russell was a leader in the revival of the philosophy of empiricism in the larger
field of epistemology. In Our Knowledge of the External World (1926)
and Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1962), he attempted to explain all
factual knowledge as constructed out of immediate experiences. Among his other
books are The ABC of Relativity (1925), Education and the Social Order
(1932), A History of Western Philosophy (1945), The Impact of Science
upon Society (1952), My Philosophical Development (1959), War
Crimes in Vietnam (1967), and The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
(3 volumes, 1967-1969).
From: "Russell, Bertrand Arthur William, 3rd Earl Russell," Microsoft®
Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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