Bertrand Arthur William Russell, Earl Russell, 1872-1970

Russell left an autobiography in three volumes and two earlier autobiographical essays. These works were widely read. The style is fresh and lucid, perhaps unequalled since Bishop Berkeley or Hume; and as memorable. So the reader may be assumed to know the general outline of Russell’s life and thought. Since the complete bibliography of his writings is said to run to 500 pages there can be no question of attempting a full account here. The selection below, from his life and works, is made on the following principles. The well-known aspects of his life, including his activities as a publicist and reformer, are described only briefly. For balance part I presents in more detail those aspects which, though perhaps equally important and sometimes quite explicit in his writings, have not become widely known. (Since Russell was a controversial figure, the selection made here may also be controversial.) Part II goes into ‘his researches concerning the Principles of Mathematics and the Mathematical Treatment of the Logic of Relations’—to use the wording of the proposal for his election to the Royal Society. Some of Russell’s views on points of general philosophic interest related to his scientific work are sketched in part III. Many of his later general writings do not always respect Hooke’s warning (to the Royal Society) against ‘meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick, or Logick’, in the sense in which Hooke understood those words. To compromise with Hooke’s law, the memoir confines itself to describing Russell’s view of the world, how questions in the forbidden subjects presented themselves to him, without going too closely into the sense of the questions or the validity of the answers. This is done at the end of part III.