Naturalizing Russell

Abstract This chapter examines Bertrand Russell’s influence on W. V. Quine, specifically through the three areas of logic, ontology, and epistemology. These three topics correspond roughly to the three periods of Quine’s philosophy: early, middle, and late. The chapter aims to demonstrate Quine’s sympathy to Russell’s philosophical aims, as Quine understood them, with regard to a scientific approach to philosophy. The chapter does not argue for the correctness of Quine’s reading of Russell but, rather, aims to show how Quine transforms Russell’s scientific philosophy into Quine’s particular form of scientific naturalism. From Quine’s perspective, this scientific naturalism can be seen as the culmination of the kind of scientific philosophizing that Russell urged.