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OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
EXTERNAL WORLD
AS A FIELD FOR SCIENTIFIC METHOD
IN PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
Second Edition. Demy 8vo, 12s. 6d. net.
THE ANALYSIS OF MIND
Demy 8vo, 16s. net.
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
Seventh Impression. Cr. 8vo, 5s. net; Limp, 3s. 6d. net.
ROADS TO FREEDOM: SOCIALISM, ANARCHISM AND SYNDICALISM
Fourth Impression. Cr. 8vo, 5s. net; Limp, 3s. 6d. net.
THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF BOLSHEVISM
Second Impression. Cr. 8vo, 6s. net.
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF
THE EXTERNAL WORLD
AS A FIELD FOR SCIENTIFIC METHOD
IN PHILOSOPHY
BY
BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
First published in 1914 by
The Open Court Publishing Company
Reissued by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
1922
PREFACE
The following lectures[1] are an attempt to show, by means of examples, the nature, capacity, and limitations of the logical-analytic method in philosophy. This method, of which the first complete example is to be found in the writings of Frege, has gradually, in the course of actual research, increasingly forced itself upon me as something perfectly definite, capable of embodiment in maxims, and adequate, in all branches of philosophy, to yield whatever objective scientific knowledge it is possible to obtain. Most of the methods hitherto practised have professed to lead to more ambitious results than any that logical analysis can claim to reach, but unfortunately these results have always been such as many competent philosophers considered inadmissible. Regarded merely as hypotheses and as aids to imagination, the great systems of the past serve a very useful purpose, and are abundantly worthy of study. But something different is required if philosophy is to become a science, and to aim at results independent of the tastes and temperament of the philosopher who advocates them. In what follows, I have endeavoured to show, however imperfectly, the way by which I believe that this desideratum is to be found.
The central problem by which I have sought to illustrate method is the problem of the relation between the crude data of sense and the space, time, and matter of mathematical physics. I have been made aware of the importance of this problem by my friend and collaborator Dr Whitehead, to whom are due almost all the differences between the views advocated here and those suggested in The Problems of Philosophy.[2] I owe to him the definition of points, the suggestion for the treatment of instants and “things,” and the whole conception of the world of physics as a construction rather than an inference. What is said on these topics here is, in fact, a rough preliminary account of the more precise results which he is giving in the fourth volume of our Principia Mathematica.[3] It will be seen that if his way of dealing with these topics is capable of being successfully carried through, a wholly new light is thrown on the time-honoured controversies of realists and idealists, and a method is obtained of solving all that is soluble in their problem.
The speculations of the past as to the reality or unreality of the world of physics were baffled, at the outset, by the absence of any satisfactory theory of the mathematical infinite. This difficulty has been removed by the work of Georg Cantor. But the positive and detailed solution of the problem by means of mathematical constructions based upon sensible objects as data has only been rendered possible by the growth of mathematical logic, without which it is practically impossible to manipulate ideas of the requisite abstractness and complexity. This aspect, which is somewhat obscured in a merely popular outline such as is contained in the following lectures, will become plain as soon as Dr Whitehead's work is published. In pure logic, which, however, will be very briefly discussed in these lectures, I have had the benefit of vitally important discoveries, not yet published, by my friend Mr Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Since my purpose was to illustrate method, I have included much that is tentative and incomplete, for it is not by the study of finished structures alone that the manner of construction can be learnt. Except in regard to such matters as Cantor's theory of infinity, no finality is claimed for the theories suggested; but I believe that where they are found to require modification, this will be discovered by substantially the same method as that which at present makes them appear probable, and it is on this ground that I ask the reader to be tolerant of their incompleteness.
Cambridge,
June 1914.
CONTENTS
| LECTURE | PAGE | |
|---|---|---|
| I. | Current Tendencies | [3] |
| II. | Logic as the Essence of Philosophy | [33] |
| III. | On our Knowledge of the External World | [63] |
| IV. | The World of Physics and the World of Sense | [101] |
| V. | The Theory of Continuity | [129] |
| VI. | The Problem of Infinity considered Historically | [155] |
| VII. | The Positive Theory of Infinity | [185] |
| VIII. | On the Notion of Cause, with Applications to the Free-will Problem | [211] |
| Index | [243] | |
[LECTURE I]
CURRENT TENDENCIES
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning. Ever since Thales said that all is water, philosophers have been ready with glib assertions about the sum-total of things; and equally glib denials have come from other philosophers ever since Thales was contradicted by Anaximander. I believe that the time has now arrived when this unsatisfactory state of things can be brought to an end. In the following course of lectures I shall try, chiefly by taking certain special problems as examples, to indicate wherein the claims of philosophers have been excessive, and why their achievements have not been greater. The problems and the method of philosophy have, I believe, been misconceived by all schools, many of its traditional problems being insoluble with our means of knowledge, while other more neglected but not less important problems can, by a more patient and more adequate method, be solved with all the precision and certainty to which the most advanced sciences have attained.
Among present-day philosophies, we may distinguish three principal types, often combined in varying proportions by a single philosopher, but in essence and tendency distinct. The first of these, which I shall call the classical tradition, descends in the main from Kant and Hegel; it represents the attempt to adapt to present needs the methods and results of the great constructive philosophers from Plato downwards. The second type, which may be called evolutionism, derived its predominance from Darwin, and must be reckoned as having had Herbert Spencer for its first philosophical representative; but in recent times it has become, chiefly through William James and M. Bergson, far bolder and far more searching in its innovations than it was in the hands of Herbert Spencer. The third type, which may be called “logical atomism” for want of a better name, has gradually crept into philosophy through the critical scrutiny of mathematics. This type of philosophy, which is the one that I wish to advocate, has not as yet many whole-hearted adherents, but the “new realism” which owes its inception to Harvard is very largely impregnated with its spirit. It represents, I believe, the same kind of advance as was introduced into physics by Galileo: the substitution of piecemeal, detailed, and verifiable results for large untested generalities recommended only by a certain appeal to imagination. But before we can understand the changes advocated by this new philosophy, we must briefly examine and criticise the other two types with which it has to contend.