Philosophy/Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell
by . New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 1927. 8vo. viii+301 pp. $3.00.
New York: The Modern Library. 1927. 16mo. vii+390 pp. $.95.
Philosophy, by Bertrand Bussell, is not, as the wrapper of the book would have you believe, ‘Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy.’ That, in itself, would include the contributions of this distinguished mind in the fields of mathematics, logic, and political science. The volume is even more inclusive, for it embraces a point of view of philosophy in terms of modern science and its relation to our new physics, relativity and the atom, as well as our new psychologies, behaviorism and Gestalt. The English edition is entitled An Outline of Philosophy and no doubt this is closer to the essence of the content.
The great danger of an outline of philosophy considered from the most modern point of view lies in the fact that the entire structure rests upon many ideas still in the process of development. There are changes going on in the behavioristic psychology as well as in the highly specialized science of relativity. About a year ago the author of this review visited Professor Köhler and his Gestalt laboratory in Berlin and saw the beginnings of experiments that will require several years to complete, and only recently he was informed that in the field of physics new experiments lead to the abandonment of Bohr’s spectacular picture of the atom. Professor Einstein has now been silent for quite a time and at any moment he may bring forward the results of his recent investigations, which are rumored to outrevolutionize even relativity itself!
These four corner stones are still unadjusted. Mr. Russell has used what he could, without being too cocksure, and has built a most brilliant philosophical structure, written in a style simple and lively, such as only Russell can write. Time will no doubt require the revision of several conceptions in this volume, though nobody who reads the volume would dare say that the author should have waited for more light when the flood already thrown into the text is brilliant to the point of dazzling.
The book is not another history of philosophy, nor is it another chronologically arranged set of biographies of men who worked with philosophical problems. The problems that this volume embraces are none of them new — it is only the manner and point of view that make this book different. Mr. Russell uses all forces at his disposal to examine man in his relation to his environment. His main strength comes from his scientific background and his power of clear, logical deduction. Mystical, intuitive, monistic, and other metaphysical systems all suffer in Russell’s hands. Only pluralism and the ‘neutral monism’ of William James remain undisturbed and form the background for this outline dealing with the problems of mankind. The use of the word ‘neutral’ in this regard is credited to Dr. H. M. Shelter.
Some of the chapters in this volume deal with memory, habit, language, the atom, relativity, images, imagination, and ethics. Many of these problems have in recent years been considered by themselves from psychological or other scientific points of view, but here for the first time they are gathered together and considered philosophically in relation to each other. Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy is a most brilliant outline written to help man know the structure and elements of life. It is heavily loaded with ideas and reaches out to extend the horizon of knowledge.
The Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell is a collection chosen by the philosopher himself for popular circulation, from his previous writings. It contains his well-known essays, ’A Free Man’s Worship’ and ‘Mysticism and Logic,’ as well as essays from his books on political science, China, and his less difficult scientific works. Readers in philosophy will contend that the volume contains nothing new and even omits Russell’s great contribution (the mathematics of the infinite), but the layman will be pleased to have this collection of Russell’s essays, gathered from many sources, and published with an introduction in which Russell tells why he gave up his work in mathematical philosophy and turned his attention to the problems closer to the happiness of mankind.
MANUEL KOMROFF