Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS[7] (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, logician, philosopher, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic philosophy.[8]
The Earl Russell
2 February 1970 (aged 97)
Trinity College, Cambridge (BA, 1893)
- De Morgan Medal (1932)
- Sylvester Medal (1934)
- Nobel Prize in Literature (1950)
- Kalinga Prize (1957)
- Jerusalem Prize (1963)
- Epistemology
- ethics
- logic
- mathematics
- metaphysics
- philosophy
- Analytic philosophy
- Automated reasoning
- Automated theorem proving
- Axiom of reducibility
- Barber paradox
- Berry paradox
- Chicken
- Connective
- Criticism of the coherence theory of truth
- Criticism of the doctrine of internal relations/logical holism
- Definite description
- Descriptivist theory of names
- Direct reference theory[2]
- Double negation
- Epistemic structural realism[3]
- Existential fallacy
- Failure of reference
- Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description
- Logical atomism (atomic proposition)
- Logical form
- Mathematical beauty
- Mathematical logic
- Meaning
- Metamathematics
- Philosophical logic
- Predicativism
- Propositional analysis
- Propositional calculus
- Naive set theory
- Neutral monism[4]
- Paradoxes of set theory
- Peano–Russell notation
- Propositional formula
- Self-refuting idea
- Quantification
- Russell–Myhill paradox
- Russell's conjugation
- Russell-style universes
- Russell's paradox
- Russell's teapot
- Russell's theory of causal lines[5]
- Russellian change
- Russellian propositions
- Russellian view (Russell's critique of Meinong's theory of objects)
- Set-theoretic definition of natural numbers
- Singleton
- Theory of descriptions
- Theory of relations
- Type theory/ramified type theory
- Tensor product of graphs
- Unity of the proposition
Labour (1922–1965)
Liberal (1907–1922)
He was one of the early 20th century's prominent logicians[8] and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore, and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism".[b] Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic (see Logicism). Russell's article "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy".[10]
Russell was a pacifist who championed anti-imperialism and chaired the India League.[11][12][13] He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I,[14] and initially supported appeasement against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, before changing his view in 1943, describing war as a necessary "lesser of two evils". In the wake of World War II, he welcomed American global hegemony in favour of either Soviet hegemony or no (or ineffective) world leadership, even if it were to come at the cost of using their nuclear weapons.[15] He would later criticise Stalinist totalitarianism, condemn the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, and become an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.[16]
In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".[17][18] He was also the recipient of the De Morgan Medal (1932), Sylvester Medal (1934), Kalinga Prize (1957), and Jerusalem Prize (1963).
Biography[edit]
Early life and background[edit]
Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born at Ravenscroft, a country house in Trellech, Monmouthshire,[a] on 18 May 1872, into an influential and liberal family of the British aristocracy.[19][20] His parents were Viscount and Viscountess Amberley. Lord Amberley consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor,[21][22] the biologist Douglas Spalding. Both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous.[23] Lord Amberley was a deist, and even asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russell's secular godfather.[24] Mill died the year after Russell's birth, but his writings later influenced Russell's life.
Below are selected Russell's works in English, sorted by year of first publication:
Russell was the author of more than sixty books and over two thousand articles.[205][206] Additionally, he wrote many pamphlets, introductions, and letters to the editor. One pamphlet titled, I Appeal unto Caesar': The Case of the Conscientious Objectors, ghostwritten for Margaret Hobhouse, the mother of imprisoned peace activist Stephen Hobhouse, allegedly helped secure the release from prison of hundreds of conscientious objectors.[207]
His works can be found in anthologies and collections, including The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University began publishing in 1983. By March 2017 this collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works included 18 volumes,[208] and several more are in progress. A bibliography in three additional volumes catalogues his publications. The Russell Archives held by McMaster's William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections possess over 40,000 of his letters.[209]
