Preeminent among twentieth-century logicians in his day, Russell collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead in writing the magisterial Principia Mathematica (published in 1910, 1912, 1913, and in a second revised edition in 1925-1927) in an effort to establish a logical basis for mathematics. In philosophy proper, Russell’s 1905 “On Denoting” (published in the journal Mind) advanced the theory that denoting phrases (semantically complex expressions that can serve as the grammatical subject of a sentence) have no meaning in themselves, “but every proposition in whose verbal expression they occur has a meaning.” This led to the descriptivist theory of names, which holds that for every proper name, there is some collection of descriptions associated with it that constitute the meaning of the name. This theory is considered a paradigm of philosophy and is representative of a whole range of Russell’s thought, which has influenced everything from logic and mathematics to cognitive science, computer science, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics.
Bertrand Russell was born May 18, 1872 in Trellech Monmouthshire, Wales, into a liberal-leaning aristocratic family. He was raised largely by his grandparents after his father’s death and was from youth afflicted with depression. His absorbing passion for mathematics helped him to overcome suicidal thoughts, and he entered Trinity College Cambridge in 1890 on a mathematics scholarship. He married Alys Smith in 1894—the first of four marriages, all in varying degrees unhappy, prompting him at last to advocate “free love.”
Principia Mathematica was published in 1903 and catapulted him to international fame, leading to his elevation as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908. As a lecturer at Cambridge University, he met Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became an associate and a protégé. During World War I, Russell’s vigorous pacifism led to his dismissal from Trinity college in 1916 and a six-month term in prison. In 1920, after the war, he visited Russia, hoping to have his hopes for the positive effects of the Communist revolution confirmed, only to experience disappointment, which led him to write The Practise and Theory of Bolshevism, a condemnation of Communism. Similarly, the outbreak of World War II compelled Russell to suspend his pacifism because he believed fighting the evil of Hitler justified going to war. In 1945, his History of Western Philosophy became a bestseller, earning him yet greater fame and providing a substantial income for the rest of his long life. Russell continued to write and eloquently resumed his pacifist stance. He succumbed to influenza on February 2, 1970 at the age of 97.
Russell’s greatest impact on philosophy was his foundational work on analytic philosophy, which steered both British and American twentieth-century philosophical thought away from the idealism of so-called “Continental philosophy.” But, in truth, he made important contributions to every major field of philosophy except for aesthetics. Moreover, despite his embrace of analytics, he advocated what he called the “Will to Doubt,” arguing that all “our beliefs … have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error” and “increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs” requires “hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant
facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate.”
Russell’s influence on twentieth-century philosophy is matched only by his impact on logic and mathematics—and, more precisely, mathematical logic. He also proposed in a series of 1918 lectures, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,” the concept of an ideal language by which human knowledge could be reduced to terms of “atomic” propositions and their truthfunctional “compounds.” This was Russell’s most extreme expression of radical empiricism, requiring every meaningful proposition to refer directly to known objects. While Russell later retrenched from the extremism of logical atomism, he continued to advocate breaking everything down to the simplest possible components.
