Book Review:Our Knowledge of the External World; as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. Bertrand Russell

The history of Natural Philosophy is dominated by a paradox; broadly speaking, a vast increase in its range of application to the external world has been accompanied by a sweeping simplification in its basic assumptions. From the standpoint of Empiricism this dual development appears utterly mysterious. On the other hand, Rationalism, which seeks to demonstrate the metaphysical necessity of natural law, and hence might throw light on this development, has been generally discredited, particularly by men of science. It is not surprising, therefore, that philosophical discussion of scientific method has become a Babel of confusing tongues.

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Ben Jonson and the Illusion of Completeness

PMLA ◽

10.2307/1261156 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 84 (1) ◽

pp. 51-59 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

L. A. Beaturline

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Ben Jonson ◽

External World ◽

The Other ◽

Bertrand Russell ◽

Infinite Class ◽

Literary Forms ◽

Significant Distinction ◽

Century Literature

IN Our Knowledge of the External World, Bertrand Russell makes a significant distinction between two kinds of infinity. One kind is illustrated by the progression from zero to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, on to infinity; Russell calls this an infinite progression, and it is unlimited. The other idea is illustrated by the division of an interval between, say, one and two; first divide it into halves, then divide each of those halves, and so on infinitely. This is a compact series or an infinite class, and it is limited. The infinite progression and the infinite class are quite different ideas, and they have different philosophical uses. I suggest that a similar distinction may be made concerning literary forms, and that this distinction helps us to understand what is new about Ben Jonson's dramatic method. The distinction reverberates through seventeenth-century literature, I believe, but Jonson is especially interesting because he is somewhat of a pioneer.

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The Presuppositions of Survival

Philosophy ◽

10.1017/s0031819100038559 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 62 (239) ◽

pp. 17-30 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Antony Flew

Keyword(s):

Empirical Evidence ◽

External World ◽

Bertrand Russell ◽

Human Interest ◽

Special Sciences ◽

Scientific Philosophy ◽

The Times ◽

The Universe ◽

Human Destiny

1. Nowadays, I am told, many popular novels have anti-heroes not heroes. So perhaps it accords with the spirit of the times for my sermon to have not a text but an anti-text. This is taken from the first chapter of Our Knowledge of the External World by Bertrand Russell. It reads: ‘All the questions which have what is called a human interest—such, for example, as the question of a future life—belong, at least in theory, to special sciences and are capable, at least in theory, of being decided by empirical evidence … a genuinely scientific philosophy cannot hope to appeal to any except those who have the wish to understand, to escape from intellectual bewilderment … it does not offer, or attempt to offer, a solution to the problem of human destiny, or of the destiny of the Universe’..

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How Not to Know the Principle of Induction

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism ◽

10.1163/22105700-bja10020 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-12

Author(s):

Howard Sankey

Keyword(s):

A Priori ◽

External World ◽

Bertrand Russell ◽

Interpretation Of Probability ◽

Subjective Interpretation ◽

Objective Interpretation ◽

The World ◽

The Mind

Abstract In The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell presents a justification of induction based on a principle he refers to as “the principle of induction.” Owing to the ambiguity of the notion of probability, the principle of induction may be interpreted in two different ways. If interpreted in terms of the subjective interpretation of probability, the principle of induction may be known a priori to be true. But it is unclear how this should give us any confidence in our use of induction, since induction is applied to the external world outside our minds. If the principle is interpreted in light of the objective interpretation of induction, it cannot be known to be true a priori, since it applies to frequencies that occur in the world outside the mind, and these cannot be known without recourse to experience. Russell’s principle of induction therefore fails to provide a satisfactory justification of induction.

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Nagel, Ernest (1901–85)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-dd047-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Isaac Levi

Keyword(s):

John Dewey ◽

History Of Mathematics ◽

Vienna Circle ◽

External World ◽

Natural Sciences ◽

Bertrand Russell ◽

Columbia University ◽

History Of ◽

Entire Career ◽

The 1960S

Ernest Nagel was arguably the pre-eminent American philosopher of science from the mid 1930s to the 1960s. He taught at Columbia University for virtually his entire career. Although he shared with Bertrand Russell and with members of the Vienna Circle a respect for and sensitivity to developments in mathematics and the natural sciences, he endorsed a strand in the thought of Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey that Nagel himself called ‘contextual naturalism’. Among the main features of contextual naturalism is its distrust of reductionist claims that are not the outcomes of scientific inquiries. Nagel’s contextual naturalism infused his influential, detailed and informed essays on probability, explanation in the natural and social sciences, measurement, history of mathematics, and the philosophy of law. It is reflected, for example, in his trenchant critiques of Russell’s reconstruction of the external world and Russell’s epistemology as well as cognate views endorsed at one time or another by members of the Vienna Circle.

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Evidentiary Cosmopolitanism

10.1093/oso/9780190642822.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Nan Goodman

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

New England ◽

Scientific Method ◽

John Locke ◽

External World ◽

Eyewitness Testimony ◽

Legal Evidence ◽

Human Interactions ◽

Faith Based

The late seventeenth century, known for its contributions to the scientific method, also saw shifts in the understanding of legal evidence, the most prominent of which charted a course away from faith-based claims about knowledge to claims based on eyewitness testimony. Less well-known was a shift in legal evidence from the local to the global or from circumscribed to cosmopolitan witnessing. When John Locke argued that knowledge was the result of human interactions with the external world, the category of what counted as knowledge became geopolitically extensive, opening itself up to “facts,” as they were understood in local and global contexts. This expansion of the sphere for available facts led to a preference for truths grounded in the facts of a larger world—in evidentiary cosmopolitanism—which emerges in the writings of the late seventeenth-century New England Puritans as the centerpiece of their argument against royal oppression and the loss of their charter.

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Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series ◽

10.1017/s0957042x00004144 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. 217-218

Author(s):

R. M. Sainsbury

Keyword(s):

Royal Society ◽

Prime Minister ◽

Trinity College ◽

External World ◽

Bertrand Russell ◽

Foundations Of Geometry ◽

Queen Victoria

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), born in Trelleck, Wales, was the grandson of the first Earl Russell, who introduced the Reform Bill of 1832 and served as prime minister under Queen Victoria. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1890–1894, was a Fellow of Trinity College, 1895–1901, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1908, and was a lecturer in philosophy, 1910–1916. Among his publications in philosophy in this period were An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897), A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900), The Principles of Mathematics (1903), Principia Mathematica (with A. N. Whitehead, 1910–1913), The Problems of Philosophy (1912) and Our Knowledge of the External World (1914).

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