Russell

The Analysis of Matter is the product of thirty years of thinking by one of the twentieth century’s best-known philosophers. An inquiry into the philosophical foundations of physics, it was written against the background of stunning new developments in physics earlier in the century, above all relativity, as well as the excitement around quantum theory, which was just being developed.

Concerned to place physics on a stable footing at a time of great theoretical change, Russell argues that the concept of matter itself can be replaced by a logical construction whose basic foundations are events. He is careful to point out that this does not prove that matter does not exist, but it does show that physicists can get on with their work without assuming that matter does exist. Russell argues that fundamental bits of ”matter”, such as electrons and protons, are simply groups of events connected in a certain way and their properties are all that are required for physics.

This Routledge Classics edition includes the 1992 Introduction by John G. Slater.

My Philosophical Development is Russell’s intellectual autobiography and provides a fascinating insight into the extraordinary energy and philosophical ambition that saw him write over 40 books. As well as offering some fascinating glimpses into the changing nature of his philosophical beliefs, Russell also reflects on the fundamental themes that governed his thinking in later life.

Beginning with an account of his decisive turn against the philosophical idealism that was prevalent in Cambridge at the turn of the century, Russell takes us through his engagement with the foundations of mathematics and the writing, with A.N. Whitehead, of Principia Mathematica. Russell also provides important insights into his theory of knowledge and the mind and conscious experience, before finishing with reflections on his work on language, universals and particulars and his theory of truth.

An ideal philosophical companion to Russell’s own Autobiography, My Philosophical Development is testament to one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.

First published in 1954, Human Society in Ethics and Politics is Bertrand Russell’s last full account of his ethical and political positions relating to both politics and religion. Ethics, he argues, are necessary to man because of the conflict between intelligence and impulse – if one were without the other, there would be no place for ethics. Man’s impulses and desires are equally social and solitary. Politics and ethics are the means by which we as a society and as individuals become socially purposeful and moral codes inculcate our rules of action.

How do we know what we “know”? How did we –as individuals and as a society – come to accept certain knowledge as fact? In Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell questions the reliability of our assumptions on knowledge. This brilliant and controversial work investigates the relationship between ‘individual’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge. First published in 1948, this provocative work contributed significantly to an explosive intellectual discourse that continues to this day.