Bertrand Russell's survey of nearly seventy years of his own work is one of the most illuminating books. It is a masterpiece of philosophical autobiography. This edition includes a new introduction by Thomas Baldwin, University of Cambridge.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, was a Welsh philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, pacifist, and prominent rationalist. Although he was usually regarded as English, as he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
درود بر <برتراند راسل> این فیلسوفِ خردمند و یادش همیشه گرامی باد... به درستی که <برتراند راسل> فیلسوفِ تمامِ دوران و تمامِ فلسفه هاست دوستانِ گرانقدر، این کتاب از 401 صفحه و 18 فصل تشکیل شده است این فیلسوفِ بزرگوار در این کتاب فلسفه اش را به روشِ ارائهٔ خاطراتش بیان نموده است... یعنی پله پله، باورها و اندیشه ها و پرسشهایی را که در ذهنش از کودکی تا جوانی و بزرگسالی در موردِ دانش و آفریدگار و جهان و ریاضیات و فیزیک و هندسه، ایجاد میشده است را مطرح نموده و جوابهایی را که در آن بخشِ زمانی از زندگیش به آنها داده است را نیز در این کتاب فصل به فصل و بخش به بخش نوشته است مهمترین نکته ای که با خواندنِ این کتاب به آن رسیدم این بود که تفاوتِ این بزرگوار با کسی مثلِ من این است که او از نوجوانی به مسائلی توجه داشته و به آنها اندیشیده است که من در بزرگسالی در پی رسیدنِ به آن بودم و چه زیبا پرسشهایی را که برایش ایجاد میشده است را طبقه بندی کرده و ثابت نموده که هر انسانی فیلسوف و اندیشمند زاده نمیشود... و این نوعِ طرحِ پرسش و تلاش برایِ رسیدن به پاسخِ درست و کامل است که از یک انسانِ معمولی، یک فیلسوف و اندیشمند میسازد زنده یاد <برتراند راسل> نوشته است که تا جوانی همچون دیگران به خرافاتِ مذهبی و دینی و پیامبران و خدا و اینگونه موهومات، باور داشته است... ولی به مرورِ زمان و با پیشرفتِ دانش و خردش بوده که از منجلابِ خرافات و موهوماتِ دینی رهایی پیدا کرده است... به واسطهٔ دانشِ ریاضی و فیزیک و فلسفهٔ خرد و اندیشهٔ انسانی، این مردِ بزرگ تبدیل به فیلسوفی شده است که امروزه کسی همچون من او را الگویِ خویش قرار داده و از فلسفهٔ این بزرگوار در زندگی پیروی کنم این انسانِ بزرگ نوشته است: در هرکاری باید پیرو عقل و خرد باشیم، نه غریزه هایی که بیشترِ آنها را از نیاکانمان به ارث برده ایم، یا در اثر فراروندِ انتخابِ طبیعی به تدریج از آنها کسب نموده ایم و برخی دیگر را از طریقِ تربیت بدست آورده ایم چه ابلهانه است که در موردِ مسائلِ درست یا نادرست بودن، از این احکام و غریزه ها پیروی شود. زیرا قسمتِ موروثی ممکن است فقط اصولی باشد که به صیانتِ نوعی که ما به آن تعلق داریم می انجامد.. و قسمتی که از راهِ تربیت حاصل شده است، بر حسبِ نوعِ تربیتِ فردی، یا خوب است و یا بد ... ولی ما موجوداتی که از خرد و عقل برخورداریم، باید از این ندایِ درونی پیروی کنیم کمالِ مطلوب آن چیزیست که به خوشبختی بیانجامد، بنابراین از عقل و خرد برایِ رسیدن به این مقصد باید بهره ببریم نه از دین و مذهب ********************************** عزیزانم، این کتاب میتواند در فهمِ اندیشه هایِ <برتراند راسل> بسیار مفید باشد. چراکه در اغلبِ موارد، ساده ترین شیوهٔ روشن سازیِ اندیشه های زنده یاد <برتراند راسل> این است که مو به مو مرحله هایی را که در طیِ آن، این فیلسوفِ گرانقدر به این اندیشه ها رسیده است را دنبال کنیم امروزه به سختی دیدگاهِ فلسفیِ دارایِ اهمیتی یافت میشود که در یک دوره در نوشته هایِ این بزرگمردِ فلسفه، بازتاب نیافته باشد --------------------------------------------- امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ آشنایی با این کتابِ ارزشمند، کافی و مفید بوده باشه <پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
Very interesting reflection by Russell himself on the development of his thinking in the twentieth century. It's not a biography and one has to have some background information about the people, concepts and theories he mentions.
Basically he moved from being occupied with mathematical logic to epistemology to language, pretty much re-stating many times prior positions. The man changed his opinions more than there are grains of sand on a beach. This makes him both brutally honest (and an example to follow for many of us) and very hard to understand.
Although the book is about Russell's development (i.e. changing opinions on philosophical and scientific matters), there is one thing he kept holding on to throughout his long life: the method of analysis. According to Russell, all domains of knowledge, whether in science or mathematics, are to be based on the reduction of complex into simple concepts. And all simple concepts are complex concepts for a more fundamental field of study. This reductionism might strike many as shallow or empty, yet Russell is right in emphasizing its use in discovering new knowledge. Russell's life was characterized by mourning the loss of certainty and completeness of deductive knowledge, and trying to cope with the uncertainty and incompleteness of inductive knowledge. Paraphrasing Russell, although former times offered us certainty and comfort, modern times offer us truth, at the cost of uncertainty and discomfort. This attitude, although difficult to cope with, is a huge step forward for mankind.
The book is shot through with all kinds of Russellian wit and humor. He doesn't shy away from calling a spade a spade and from offending colleagues.
I'll re-read it at a later time for sure.
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On re-reading this book, I was struck by the change of mind that Russell went through after his phase of being occupied solely with mathematical logic (around 1900-1910). Prior to his mathematical stage he was a full blown Hegelian (albeit in the Bradleian fashion), but problems in physics led him to throw away the totalitarian system-building and focusing on founding mathematics in logic. During this stage in his career he was a full blown Platonist, in the sense that his logical and mathematical system was rooted in certain logical constructs - points, moments, particles, etc. existed as entities.
After working on Principia Mathematica Russell turned more and more towards empirical problems, for example the relationship between psychology and physics, and in shifting his philosophical focus his mindset became more and more empirical, pragmatic and pluralistic - implicitly rejecting his earlier naïve realism and monism. For example, wielding Occam's razor he explicitly stated that all the earlier entities (like points and instants) he assumed existed are nothing but logical constructs. They are useful in scientific and mathematical theories, but they are utterly useless, or at least redundant, in understanding the empirical world. The physicist who works with the concept of atoms to understand certain physical processes assumes these atoms to exist, but really they're theoretical tools with which to understand the world.
For Russell, the use in these constructs lies solely in the fact that they allows us to lay bare the structure of reality. And it is the logical structure of the world that has to map, somehow, to the logical structure of our mental activities. In this sense, Russell adheres to a correspondence theory of truth, in which the structure of events in the world is mirrored in the structure of our thoughts - or, by extension, when we use language to formulate our thoughts, in sentences.
Although he changed his minds many, many times throughout his rather long career as a philosopher, he stuck to the above mentioned beliefs. Throughout his career we see a man shifting his focus from the logical foundations of mathematics, through questions about theory of knowledge to the relationship between mind and matter (ultimately reducing them both to one primal stuff - his neutral monism - on which he changed his mind pretty quickly, again). He started becoming more and more interested in problems of language and in the 30's and 40's this culminated in his analysis of things like truth, meaning, probability, and non-deductive inference.
The latter is perhaps the most interesting, since most of our common sense and scientific knowledge is non-deductive, yet it pays for us to believe in the truth in these. In his last great work, Human Knowledge, Russell tried to analyze these non-deductive inferences and, allegedly, formulated five principles that make it possible for us to found our common sense and scientific beliefs in inferences that are of a non-deductive nature.
Again, what struck me on my second reading of this magnificent and beautiful book is Russell's dualism: he was extremely convinced of the beliefs he held, yet he also was extremely quick to change his mind on things at the sight of insoluble problems. His was a mind that was in dire need for certainty and truth, yet also a mind that became increasingly skeptical about the attainability of both of those. In the end, he worked out a theory on the probabilities of the truth of our knowledge, and even though this in itself is a resignation of uncertainty and likelihood, in the way he formulates the five principles on which this theory is built one can glimpse the dire need for certainty in exactly those principles.
Lovely book by a lovely man! Every now and then, after having read some demanding and obscure works by other philosophers, I'd like to pick up a book by Bertrand Russell and enjoy the breeze of fresh air and intellectual clarity and honesty. After having recently delved into Foucault and Merleau-Ponty, I am (again) hugely impressed by the talents of Russell both as a writer and a thinker, in expressing his complex ideas in beautiful and lucid prose. It makes me wonder why most of the Continental philosophers (especially the twentieth century ones) have written in such an obscure and indigestible way... Do they have something to hide? Is the struggle with the text that makes readers of these works admire them - as opposed to their content? Honestly, I don't know - but I do know I prefer a book by Russell over even two sentences of Husserl, Heidegger or Sartre.
کتابی بیارتباط به من که بخش عمدهش برای این بود که درک فلسفی ناقصی دارم و اونقدر که لازمه ریاضی و فیزیک بلد نیستم. اما مواجهههای راسل با ویتگنشتاین، مکالمهی درونی و همدلی متن با ویتگنشتاین جوان و تعریضهای گاه و بیگاه به دورهی دوم تاملات ویتگنشتاین چیزی نبود که بشه از دست داد
I enjoyed Russell’s 1912 Problems of Philosophy which is a good introduction to philosophy and was curious if he revised his views later in his career. My Philosophical Development in 1959 pretty much keeps Russell’s basic indirect realism. The world is not one thing but many things of which humanity and our relation to it is but a small part however important it is to us. What we know is more important than how we know, which has led philosophers astray to giving ourselves far more importance and devaluing ourselves and reality. The main opponent of Russell is idealism or holism which asserts the doctrine of internal relations: no individual thing may be understood without the whole and its relations to all things. But every whole has particulars who are members without being that thing, as we can say there are 3 of something without those things being the number 3. All we can say is that the whole is a complex of simpler things which each have something but not by virtue of sharing identity with what they have. Once we consider any relation of different things we too experience that relation itself as something distinct from the terms, which has to exist in itself some way as a sort of universal. Anything we experience exists but are different things so we must rely on inference rather than just our own experience. Our knowledge begins but doesn’t end with experience, but that doesn’t invalidate experience with some unknowable world and a purely phenomenal knowledge. It just means there are things beyond our own experience which are many and have to be inferred. I hold Russell in high regard for his realism and careful logical analysis and it seems his critique of internal relations is different than substance/metaphysical monism which he seemed to hold about the mind body relation at least.
"It seemed that animals always behave in a manner showing the rightness of the philosophy entertained by the man who observes them. ... Throughout the reign of Queen Victoria all apes were virtuous monogamists, but during the dissolute twenties their morals underwent a disastrous deterioration."
الترجمة سيئة جدًا لأبعد درجة، الكتاب أيضًا لم يعجبني، وأغلب الظن أن السبب يرجع للترجمة :) الكتاب عبارة عن سيرة فكرية للكاتب، يذكر فيها تسلسل أفكاره، لكن بشكل عام كان مهتمًا بشكل أكبر بالعلوم التطبيقية، الفيزياء والرياضيات المتقدمة بالتحديد
I have never before read a book in which the author tells you he was wrong every 3 or 4 pages, but Lord Russell does here as he recounts the philosophical ideas he embraced, came to question, rejected, then replaced with the next philosophical idea he embraced, came to question, etc. Fascinating stuff.
جميل الكتاب التهمته التهاماً فقد اهتممت مذ مدة يسيرة بفلسفة الرياضيات وكنت أقرأ عنها بشكل متفرق في كتب راسل وغيره ولكنه في هذا الكتاب تحدث بإسهاب عنها وتحولاته ونظرياته فيها. الكتاب ليس سهلاً فيحتاج لمعرفة بسيطة عن طبيعة فلسفة الرياضيات ومواضيعها؛ فبرتراند راسل لم يسلك طريقته المعتادة في التبسيط هنا ولكنه في المقابل ليس معقداً. وسبب ذلك كون الكتاب هو سيرة فكرية لراسل وتحولاته فيكتب ماتناثر من عقله على قلمه دون اقتطاع بهدف تبسيط أو توضيح حتى لاينقطع تسلسل أفكاره. هذا النوع من المذكرات الفكرية محبب إلي وحاول زكي نجيب محمود محاكاة تلك التجربة بأسلوب مختلف في كتابه الماتع "قصة عقل". أظن بأن أفضل ترجمة -والتي قرأتها أنا- هي ترجمة عبدالرشيد الصادق التي قدمها الدكتور زكي نجيب محمود- رحمه الله-.
تحدث راسل عن بداية اطلاعه على الفلسفة بشكل جاد عندما كان طالباً للرياضيات في كامبريدج وكيف أنها كادت أن تؤثر عليه. وقدم نقداً لطبيعة تدريس الرياضيات في كلية تريتني في كامبريدج المنفرة والتي كان لها أكبر الأثر السلبي عليه حتى أنه باع كل كتب الرياضيات بعدما أنهى متطلباتها وبقيت السنة الأخيرة الخاصة بالفلسفة. في تلك الفترة كان اهتمام راسل منصباً على دراسة أسس الهندسة وكذلك أسس الفيزياء. تحدث كيف أنه كان مؤمن بالحركة النسبية قبل أن يخرج اينشتاين بالنظرية النسبية ومخالف للحركة المطلقة التي قال بها نيوتن. كان تابعاً بالكلية لهيجل وكانط. وحاول أن يخرج بنظرية الديالكتيك في العلوم.
تحدث عن كتابه العظيم (برنكبيا ماثماتكا) الذي أثبت من خلاله أن الرياضيات البحتة تترتب على مقدمات منطقية خالصة. وهذا مخالف لنظريات كانط الذي يرى باستحالة تطبيق المنهج الرياضي على التفكير الفلسفي. وصفه كانتور بالمتعجرف السفسطائي وأضاف برتراند راسل أيضاً بالمتعجرف السفسطائي الذي لم يكن يعرف من الرياضيات إلا قليلاً! وهذه الإثبات كون الرياضيات (الرياضة) البحتة من المنطق يرى راسل بأنها الضربة القاضية لفلسفة كانط. تصورات كانط -برأيي-عن الرياضيات كونها تركيبية وليست تحليلية كان راجعاً لعدم انفكاكه عن الرياضيات التطبيقية وتجريدها بشكل أكبر نحو البحتة مما جعله تحت مدفع كانتور وراسل فتصوره صحيح في اعتبارات الرياضيات التطبيقية والفيزياء النظرية.
تحدث راسل أيضاً عن مفارقة الفئة التي تحوي على نقيضها والذي اتخذها العديد من علماء الرياضيات -مثل بوانكاريه- الذين كانوا معارضين للمنطق الرياضي مدخل للطعن في نظريته التي تولد التناقضات وكيف أتعبته تلك المفارقة ودعته لدراسة جادة للفئات وحاول حلها بطرح نظرية الأنماط (Theory of type) والذي فرق بين القضية ودالة القضية فدالة القضية هي صيغة لفظية لا تثبت أو تنفي شيء وهذا يبين أن المفارقة السابقة تضع دالة القضية معلوما لمجهول نفسها وهنا الخطأ التي نبهت عليه نظرية الأنماط. وحقيقة أنا مبهور بتلك النظرية فهي من ملامح عبقرية راسل وتفك إشكاليات عديدة وتثبت مقالة راسل كون أن المفارقة كانت بالأصل تمس المنطق وليس الرياضيات.
يختصر راسل رحلته الفكرية الفلسفية برحلة التراجع عن فيثاغورس وهذا آخر فصل وكان تراجيدياً تحدث فيه عن خيبته الكبيرة. تراجع راسل عن النظرة الفيثاغورية الصوفية اتجاه الأعداد وتراجع عن نظرتهم إلى الواقع فلم يعد وقائع مشوهة عن قيم عليا وقضبان للحس بل أصبح نوافذ. ويرى أن الرياضيات تحصيل حاصل؛ تنطلق من مسلمات حتى تنتهي لنتيجة تتطابق مع تلك المسلمات فأصبحت عملية جميلة لتمرين العقل والفكر لكنها لا تعطي اليقين الذي كان ينشده في الرياضيات.
من جميل الاقتباسات عبارة راسل الأدبية البليغة اللذيذة عن الرياضيات وهي" لا تتصف الرياضيات بالحق فحسب، لكنها تتصف كذلك بالجمال السامي جمال بارد صارم كجمال النحت" العبارة فاتنة جداً تأسرني كثيراً.
Having read a number of Russell's more "popular" / layman friendly books, I was surprised by how relatively difficult this book was for me. It assumes a very broad background in Western philosophy, making lots of references to and contrasts with that tradition. I don't have this background, but in the age of generative AI I was able to stay on track through a lot of back and forth with ChatGPT and Claude, whereas in the past I would have lost several afternoons chasing rabbit holes through the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy :)
My main complaint with this book is the lack of symbolic notation. Many of the technical things discussed, including quantifiers, set theory, and type theory, would be much easier expressed using symbolic notation. Being relatively familiar with these things, I was able to see what Russell was getting at and understand, but felt it would have been much easier if he would have used the now standard notation (I expect this notation was also standard when he was writing the book, but I'm not sure). I have never read Euclid's Elements, but I imagine it's analogous, where proofs are expressed purely in prose making them unnecessarily difficult to follow (but of course I can't blame Euclid here, because algebra hadn't been invented yet).
Finally, a technical note: in Chapter 7 Russell mentions that he discovered his famous paradox (i.e, that there cannot be a set of all sets that do not contain themselves as elements) while considering Cantor's proof that there is no largest cardinal and analyzing what goes wrong when one assumes that the set of all sets is in fact the largest cardinal. He does not give the details, but I think it's fairly easy to reverse engineer: if we are in an untyped ZFC style set theory where everything in the universe of discourse U is a set, then when Cantor asks us to consider the "diagonal" set D = {x in U | x not in f(x)} for f some purported surjective function from U (the set of all sets) to 2^U (the set of all subsets of U), it seems that Russell considered the possibility that 2^U = U and f = id, in which case D = {x in U | x not in x}, i.e. Russell's famous set.
درباره این تکامل فلسفی هیچ نمیتوان گفت،مگر اینکه آن را خواند کتابی که بارها قصد نیمه کاره رها کردنش را داشتم اما با یاد این موضوع که در حال مطالعه خودنوشت فیلسوفی بسیار بزرگ هستی ،این سخت خوانی بسیار طبیعی است خود را ارام و امیدوار کردم ازینکه این اثر بزرگ را خواندم بسیار بسیار خوشحال و خرسندم با منابع و مفاهیم و اشخاصی اشنا میشوی که همه از بزرگان فلسفه و علم معاصر جهان هستند و کنار این کتاب بارها و بارها باید به ویکی پدیا و وب سر کشی کنی چقدر این کتاب خوب بود؟ ،چه دانم های بسیار است لیکن من نمیدانم
Biografia filozoficzna. Autor pokazuje w niej swoją ewolucję poglądów, argumenty stojącą za nią i nierozwiązywalne aporie. Styl pisania Russella jest prosty, przyciągający i niebanalny. Z dużą przyjemnością studiowałem jego zmianę poglądów oraz doświadczałem szczerości wobec siebie i czytelnika. Książka kultowa, co tu dużo mówić. Będę czytał i wracał do niej aż do śmierci. Najpiękniejszy dowód uczciwości intelektualnej.
بدأت الكتاب ظناً أنه سيرة ذاتية لفيلسوف أحبه، ولكنه ليس كذلك الكتاب عبارة عن شرح لتطور أفكار وفلسفة رسل، تقريباً لم يكتب مرة واحدة ولكن على فترة زمنية طويلة طول حياة المؤلف، ولم يراعى فيه أو لم يكن مقصود أنه سيكون كتاب للقارئ العادى غير المتخصص فى الفسلفة أو المتبحر فيها، بالاضافة أن الترجمة لم تكن أفضل شئ أو هكذا شعرت مما جعل تجربة قراءة الكتاب ليست جيدة في أفضل الأحول
What pleasantly surprised me in this book was, in short, how Russell was consistent in his style even though his views underwent a lot of, sometimes drastic, changes. He maintained the same clarity and conciseness even when the topics are abstruse for nearly 70 years, which we must admit as one of the best literary accomplishments in the 20th century.
بهنظرم برای کسی که تازه شروع به فلسفه خوندن کرده، مناسب نیست. اما فارغ از مباحث فلسفی، رویکرد راسل تو مستند کردن عقاید و جهانبینیهاش و نقد تکتکشون خیلی برام جذاب بود.