See also: Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell (May 18th 1872, Tellek, Monmouthshire - February 2nd 1970, close to Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales), 3rd Count Russell, is a epistemologist, Mathématicien, logician, Philosophe, Politician and British Moraliste . Regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, it popularized philosophy thanks to some of its works which were accessible to all ( Essais skeptics , Why I am not Christian , Why I am not communist , Science and Religion … which made it qualify Voltaire English . Anarchist-trade unionist in his first times, always burning in the Polemic, it militated for ideas close to the Socialisme of tendency Libertaire, but especially with a great passion for the Vérité social and historical. He admired much Thomas Paine (source: Tests skeptics).

He organized the court Sartre - Russell against the crimes which have occurred during the Guerre of Vietnam. He accepted the Nobel Prize of literature in 1950 for the whole of his work, in particular for his humanistic engagement and like free thinker. Lastly, he became member of the British Parliament.

Biography

Bertrand Russell, second wire of the Amberley Viscount, was born on May 18th, 1872 in Trellech, in Monmouthshire, in Wales.

He lost his mother and his sister in 1875, then his father in 1876. His/her grandfather, John Russell, the first Count Russell, second wire of the 6th Duke of Bedford (former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the Years 1840 and 1860) and his grandmother (born Lady Frances Elliot), both victoriens rigorous, obtained his guard like that of his older brother John Francis Stanley.

After the death of their grandfather in 1878, the two brothers are raised by their large mother Russell lady, in a religious and repressive atmosphere. It is his/her brother, John Francis, who succeeds under count Russell. Bertrand is a solitary teenager, with the suicidal impulses , educated at the house by tutors and passer by of many hours in the library of fire Lord Russell. His/her brother makes him discover the Éléments of Euclide, which he saw like an illumination.

In 1890, it enters to Trinity College to the Université of Cambridge, where it belongs to the Cambridge Apostles. He studies mathematics and sciences morals.

In 1894, it marries Alys Pearsall Smith, an American Quaker, against the opinion of his/her grandmother.

Starting from 1896, it carries out a scientific career, meeting Peano and corresponding with Frege. In 1901, it off formulates the Paradoxe of Russell by writing The principles mathematics (published in 1903). In 1908, it is elected in Royal Society. In 1911, it meets Ludwig Wittgenstein, which was one of the most determining meetings of its philosophical existence.

In 1910 appears the first volume of its main work from the point of view of logic, the Principia Mathematica , written in collaboration with Alfred North Whitehead. Two other volumes published respectively in 1912 and 1913 will follow.

During the First World War, its activities pacifist makes it return of Trinity College in 1916 after he had been condemned according to Defense off the Realm Act . It will be even condemned to purge a six months sorrow in the Prison of Brixton in 1918.

In 1920, it belongs to an official British delegation in Russia, then it will give courses to Beijing, accompanied by its mistress Dora Blake. He suffered in China from a low register Pneumonie, so that of the newspapers Japan board announced its death wrongly. When he visited Japan before going back to the United Kingdom, he made say by Miss Blake to the journalists that " Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according to the Japanese press, is not able to give interview to the Japanese journalists ".

In 1921, on their return to the United Kingdom, Miss Blake is pregnant five months, so that Bertrand Russell divorces Alys Pearsall Smith precipitately to marry it. They will have two children, John Conrad (the future fourth count Russell) and Katharine Jane (later Lady Katharine TAIT). At that time, written Russell of the books and founds with Dora an experimental school, the Beacon Hill School, in 1927.

In 1931, following the death of his/her brother, he becomes the third count Russell.

Its marriage with Dora Blake beat wing, and they end up divorcing when it had two children of an American journalist, Griffin Barry. In 1936, Lord Russell marries Patricia Spence (called " Peter"), which was controlling it of his/her children since 1930. They had a son, Conrad Sebastian Robert, the future fifth count Russell, celebrates historian and British politician.

Starting from 1939, it went to give courses to the the United States, but was relieved under the pretext which its radical opinions returned it " morally unsuited " to teach.

In 1944, it regained the United Kingdom to teach again in Trinity College. In 1949, it accepted off the Order Merit , and in 1950 the Nobel Prize of Literature.

His wife Patricia Spence, obtained the divorce in 1952, and he married shortly after Edith Finch, with whom he lived until her death.

During the Years 1950 and 1960, it engaged in various political causes, primarily for the nuclear Désarmement and against the Guerre of Vietnam, vigorously giving an opinion against the policy of the government of the United States.

It published in the end of the years 1960 its autobiography in three volumes, and died in 1970 in its residence of Plas Penrhuyn, with Penrhyndeydraeth, Merioneth, in Wales.

Scientific and philosophical work

Logic

The contributions of Russell include/understand primarily the development of the Calcul of the predicates of first order, the defense of the Logicisme, the paradox which bears its name and the Théorie of the types.

• Russell has refuted theory naive of units as well as logic of Gottlob Frege while discovering paradox which bears from now on its name (Paradoxe of Russell), which one can give various versions in ordinary language, of which the Paradoxe of the barber (who shaves all those and only those, which does not shave themselves --- situation which generates the insoluble question: this barber shaves it?). He included/understood the importance of these paradoxes in 1901, whereas he worked with the Principes of mathematics (1903). To solve them, Russell created the Théorie of the types: the logical species are treated on a hierarchical basis and no switching function can apply to objects having its own type.

• It wrote with Alfred North Whitehead the Principia Mathematica (First edition: 1910 -- 1913; second edition, prepared by Russell alone: 1927). This work founder with the ambition to carry out the reduction of the whole of mathematics to the logic, which constitutes the logicist project announced in the Principes of Mathematics . With this intention, the Principia Mathematica proceed to an axiomatization and a formalization of the logic of the proposals and predicates, and the objects and proposals derive from it from mathematics. In fact, only the arithmetic elementary one is approached --- the volume 4 of the Principia which was to approach the geometry was ever written. The Principia Mathematica were the first text of reference of the new logical mathematics. They were with the source of work of the philosophers and logicians Carnap, Quine and Gödel, in particular.

He was prize winner of the Médaille Sylvester in 1934.

Analytical philosophy

See also: analytical Philosophy

In philosophy, Russell brought many innovations in Métaphysique, in epistemology, ethical and Histoire of philosophy. It used the Logique to try to clarify the philosophical problems, which does of it one of the founders of the analytical Philosophie. But its fundamental problems were especially to discover if the Homme is able to know something: Does there exist in the world a knowledge whose certainty is such as no reasonable Man can question it? ( Problems of philosophy , §1)

Logical atomism

See also: logical Atomism

The reason for which I call my theory the logical atomism is that the atoms to which I want to arrive as ultimate residues of the analysis are logical atoms and not physical atoms. ( the Philosophy of the logical atomism ).

Philosophy of the language

See also: definite Description

The Théorie of descriptions is undoubtedly the most important contribution of Russell to the Philosophie of the language. It is illustrated by the sentence: the current king de France east bald person . The problem of this last proposal is to identify the object of it, since there is no king of France currently. Alexius Meinong proposed the thesis of a Réalité of entities non-existentes to which we refer the proposals of the type in the case of above. But it is a at the very least strange theory. For Frege, we must on the contrary disallow any proposal whose words do not suppose obviously for existing objects. But the problem of this last solution is that proposals without referent are not necessarily private direction, and they can thus be true.

This problem of the definite descriptions , includes terms beginning with the , or some times of the names, Walter Scott for example. Russell however sometimes estimated that the term of a proposal indicated by “name” was to be indicated by the expression: “disguised definite description. ” But in some of its work, he regarded these two terms as entirely different.

But which is the form Logique of a definite description? How to paraphrase them to reveal that the Vérité of the whole of the proposal depends on the truth of its parts? Definite descriptions are presented in the form of names indicating by nature only one and single thing. But what to say general proposal then if one of its parts seems not to be correct?

The solution of Russell is to not analyze first of all the terms alone, but the whole proposal containing a definite description. “The current king de France east bald person” can be according to him reformulated as follows: “there is a X such as this X is current king de France, and there is nothing with share X which is king de France, and X is bald person. ” Russell supports that this definite description contains an assertion of existence and an assertion of unicity, and that one can consider them separately preaching which is the manifest content of the general proposal. The proposal known as thus three things on a subject: definite description contains two of them, and the remainder of the proposal contains the last (preaching). If the object does not exist, or if it is not alone in its kind, then the whole of the proposal false and is not stripped of direction.

Theory of knowledge

Russell introduced the concept of knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description in philosophy to indicate two fundamental types of Connaissance.

Direct knowledge ( knowledge by acquaintance )

To be fully justified in a Belief in the Truth of a proposal, we should not only know such fact or Réalité which gives its truth to the proposal, we must also have a direct knowledge with the relation of correspondence which exists between this proposal and the indicated fact. That wants to say that the justification of a belief depends simply on a fact: for example, “snow is white”. This Connaissance is direct and immediate, it is not the fruit of an inference but rises simply from a feeling.

Knowledge by description

On the other hand, when there is not such a relation of knowledge, as for example the knowledge of the assassination of César - that we do not know directly, Russell speaks about knowledge by description. In this case, we are not entirely justified in our belief in the truth of a proposal.

The problem of the induction

Russell admits that this knowledge rests on what it names the scandal of the induction : the laws which we admit as general were checked only for one certain number, was it large, of particular cases; this about could not satisfy the mathematician, for whom this belief in induction rises from association and the practice (cf Hume). He admits not to see an element to solve this problem logically, and right to note that the inductive step functions , without one why within the framework of deductive logic, because any explanation of the principle of induction being able to explain is a petition of principle.

Russell is unaware of whereas an obscure researcher of the name of Richard Threlkeld Cox works with the same problem and publishes in 1946 a mathematical justification of the inductive logical founded on three axioms of pace reasonable on coherence to be waited of a method of reasoning and that it names desideratas . Cox will show two very important and close results:

• an acquisition of inductive knowledge is either Isomorphe with the theory of probability and its relation of Bayes, or soft .
• Boolean logic constitutes only one particular case of the probabilities, which represent in fact a inductive Logique since the beginning and not a simple extrapolation of the concept of Fréquence: only one mathematics governs logics Boolean and probabilistic, two the different one only by the values used: whole or real! .

Work of Cox remains been unaware of researchers then and will be redécouverts only with the beginning of the year 1970, in particular under the impulse of Myron Tribus, Irving John Good and Edwin Thompson Jaynes (the theorem of Cox is remainder named today Théorème of Cox-Jaynes). Too much late alas so that Russell, died in 1970, has time to be informed about it.

Militant Russell

“Pacifist” militancy

Pacifist, Russell was opposed to the British participation in the First World War what was worth to him the loss of its post of professor at the University of Cambridge as six months of prison where it could write Introduction to mathematical philosophy . Little before the Second world war, Russell defended a policy of peace although he admitted later like had already expressed it Gandhi that Hitler was to be fought. It was rather peaceful that pacifist, admitting that the war can represent a less evil in certain circumstances.

It gives an opinion in favor of Albert Einstein when this last is violently attacked by MacCarthistes. He writes with the The NewYork Times , which has just fustigated Einstein in one of its leading articles, in these terms: You seem to affirm that one must always obey the law, as bad as it is. I cannot believe that you carried out what this position implies. Do you condemn the Christian martyrs who refused to be submitted to the emperor, or John Brown? Not, better, I think that you dedicate to the gémonies George Washington and militate so that your country remakes allegiance with its gracious majesty Elizabeth II. As a honest British subject, I can only approve your point of view; but I am afraid which it obtains only little echo on your premise.

During the Years 1950, Russell was opposed to the nuclear weapons by signing a proclamation with Albert Einstein and Joseph Rotblat and by animating conferences. He was imprisoned by it in 1961. He also militated against the war of Vietnam with Jean-Paul Sartre by organizing a court judging the " war crimes of the army américaine" (this name was reproached to him, a court in front of being posed in theory as neutral as long as the instruction is not completed).

A very known quotation of Russell is the following one: " Given War does not who is right, only who is left." There are a pun on the double English direction of left/right, which one could return in French by: " The war is only used to know which passes the weapon on the left, not which is in its droit".

Engagement free-thinker

Russell wrote against morals victorienne, in particular for free sexuality: what cost him vigorous denunciations in the United States. He was jovial fellow besides.

He declared philosophically agnostic and in practice atheistic. He regarded the Christian god as the Greek gods: he cannot prove their existence but he is strongly convinced of their inexistence.

However, he wrote: " If you do not leave the principle that there is God, the life does not have any direction "

Some polemists reproached him for having leaning gnostic. Indeed, one allots the sentence You could to him, off race, yew you liked, say that there has superior deity who gave orders to the God that made this world, but could take up the line that nap off the gnostics took up -- line which I often thought has very plausible one has -- that ace has matter off fact this world that we know was made by the devil At has moment when God was not looking. There has good deal to Be said for that, and I amndt not concerned to refutes it .

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