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Atomism (from ancient Greek atomos, meaning "uncuttable") is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.

According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. They move through the void, bouncing off each other, sometimes becoming hooked with one or more others to form a cluster. Clusters of different shapes, arrangements, and positions give rise to the various macroscopic substances in the world.^[1][2]

References to the concept of atoms date back to ancient India and ancient Greece. In India the Jain^[3][4], Ajivika and Carvaka schools of atomism may date back to the 6th century BCE.^[5] The Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools later developed theories on how atoms combined into more complex objects.^[6] In the West, the references to atoms emerged in the 5th century BCE with Leucippus, and Democritus.^[7] Whether Indian culture influenced Greek or vice versa or whether both evolved independently is a matter of dispute.^[8]

Of importance to the philosophical concept of atomism is the historical accident that the particles which chemists and physicists of the early 19th century thought were indivisible, and therefore identified with the uncuttable a-toms of long tradition, were found in the 20th century to be composed of even smaller entities: electrons, neutrons, and protons. Further experiments showed that protons and neutrons are made of quarks. At present, quarks, electrons, and other fundamental particles such as muons, taus, neutrinos, and gauge bosons show no experimental evidence of size or substructure. However, the possibility that they too might be composed of smaller particles cannot be ruled out. Although the connection to historical atomism is at best tenuous, these particles, rather than chemical "atoms", are roughly analogous to the traditional indivisible objects.

Traditional atomism in philosophy[link]

The word atom is understood in primarily two distinct ways: firstly, by the physical sciences; secondly, by philosophy. Atomism is traditionally associated with the latter, the traditional argument of which being that atoms are the basic building blocks of all real, knowable matter, and make up absolutely anything that exists. Atoms are the smallest possible division of matter, do not have physical parts, and cannot be split, cut nor in any way further divided; they are either sizeless (point-sized) or they have a tiny size. Those that have a tiny size are called Democritean atoms. This was the perception in Greek theories of atomism. Indian Buddhists, such as Dharmakirti and others, also contributed to well-developed theories of atomism, and which involve momentary (instantaneous) atoms, that flash in and out of existence (Kalapas). The tradition of atomism leads to the position that only atoms exist, and there are no composite objects (objects with parts), which would mean that human bodies, clouds, planets, and whatnot all do not exist. This consequence of atomism was openly discussed by atomists such as Democritus, Hobbes, and perhaps even Kant (there is a debate over whether or not Kant was an atomist) among others, and it is also called mereological nihilism or metaphysical nihilism. In contemporary philosophy, atomism is not as popular as it has been in past times, because many contemporary philosophers are not willing to argue that only atoms exist, wherein there are not any things like trees, etc. Simples theory is a similar theory to atomism, but where unlike mereological nihilism, philosophers do hold that more than just atoms exist (such as cars and trees made up of the atoms).

Greek atomism[link]

Is there an ultimate, indivisible unit of matter?[link]

In the 5th century BC, Leucippus and his pupil Democritus proposed that all matter was composed of small indivisible particles called atoms, in order to reconcile two conflicting schools of thought on the nature of reality. On one side was Heraclitus, who believed that the nature of all existence is change. On the other side was Parmenides, who believed instead that all change is illusion.

Parmenides denied the existence of motion, change and void. He believed all existence to be a single, all-encompassing and unchanging mass (a concept known as monism), and that change and motion were mere illusions. This conclusion, as well as the reasoning that lead to it, may indeed seem baffling to the modern empirical mind, but Parmenides explicitly rejected sensory experience as the path to an understanding of the universe, and instead used purely abstract reasoning. Firstly, he believed there is no such thing as void, equating it with non-being (i.e. "if the void is, then it is not nothing; therefore it is not the void"). This in turn meant that motion is impossible, because there is no void to move into.^[9][10] He also wrote all that is must be an indivisible unity, for if it were manifold, then there would have to be a void that could divide it (and he did not believe the void exists). Finally, he stated that the all encompassing Unity is unchanging, for the Unity already encompasses all that is and can be.^[9]

Democritus accepted most of Parmenides' arguments, except for the idea that change is an illusion. He believed change was real, and if it was not then at least the illusion had to be explained. He thus supported the concept of void, and stated that the universe is made up of many Parmenidean entities that move around in the void.^[9] The void is infinite and provides the space in which the atoms can pack or scatter differently. The different possible packings and scatterings within the void make up the shifting outlines and bulk of the objects that organisms feel, see, eat, hear, smell, and taste. While organisms may feel hot or cold, hot and cold actually have no real existence. They are simply sensations produced in organisms by the different packings and scatterings of the atoms in the void that compose the object that organisms sense as being "hot" or "cold."

The work of Democritus only survives in secondhand reports, some of which are unreliable or conflicting. Much of the best evidence of Democritus' theory of atomism is reported by Aristotle in his discussions of Democritus' and Plato's contrasting views on the types of indivisibles composing the natural world.^[11]

Geometry and atoms[link]

Element	Polyhedron		Number of Faces	Number of Triangles
Fire	Tetrahedron (Animation)		4	24
Air	Octahedron (Animation)		8	48
Water	Icosahedron (Animation)		20	120
Earth	Cube (Animation)		6	24
Geometrical Simple Bodies According to Plato

Plato (c. 427—c. 347 BC) objected to the mechanistic purposelessness of the atomism of Democritus. He argued that atoms just crashing into other atoms could never produce the beauty and form of the world. In the Timaeus, (28B – 29A) Plato insisted that the cosmos was not eternal but was created, although its creator framed it after an eternal, unchanging model.

One part of that creation were the four simple bodies of fire, air, water, and earth. But Plato did not consider these corpuscles to be the most basic level of reality, for in his view they were made up of an unchanging level of reality, which was mathematical. These simple bodies were geometric solids, the faces of which were, in turn, made up of triangles. The square faces of the cube were each made up of four isosceles right-angled triangles and the triangular faces of the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron were each made up of six right-angled triangles.

He postulated the geometric structure of the simple bodies of the four elements as summarized in the table to the right. The cube, with its flat base and stability, was assigned to earth; the tetrahedron was assigned to fire because its penetrating points and sharp edges made it mobile. The points and edges of the octahedron and icosahedron were blunter and so these less mobile bodies were assigned to air and water. Since the simple bodies could be decomposed into triangles, and the triangles reassembled into atoms of different elements, Plato's model offered a plausible account of changes among the primary substances.^[12][13]

The rejection of atoms[link]

Sometime before 330 BC Aristotle asserted that the elements of fire, air, earth, and water were not made of atoms, but were continuous. Aristotle considered the existence of a void, which was required by atomic theories, to violate physical principles. Change took place not by the rearrangement of atoms to make new structures, but by transformation of matter from what it was in potential to a new actuality. (This theory is called hylomorphism.) A piece of wet clay, when acted upon by a potter, takes on its potential to be an actual drinking mug. Aristotle has often been criticized for rejecting atomism, but in ancient Greece the atomic theories of Democritus remained "pure speculations, incapable of being put to any experimental test. Granted that atomism was, in the long run, to prove far more fruitful than any qualitative theory of matter, in the short run the theory that Aristotle proposed must have seemed in some respects more promising".^{[14][15][unbalanced opinion]}

Later ancient atomism[link]

Epicurus (341–270) studied atomism with Nausiphanes who had been a student of Democritus. Although Epicurus was certain of the existence of atoms and the void, he was less sure we could adequately explain specific natural phenomena such as earthquakes, lightning, comets, or the phases of the Moon (Lloyd 1973, 25–6). Few of Epicurus's writings survive and those that do reflect his interest in applying Democritus's theories to assist people in taking responsibility for themselves and for their own happiness—since he held there are no gods around that can help them. He understood gods' role as moral ideals.

His ideas are also represented in the works of his follower Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things. This scientific work in poetic form illustrates several segments of Epicurean theory on how the universe came into its current stage and it shows that the phenomena we perceive are actually composite forms. The atoms and the void are eternal and in constant motion. Atomic collisions create objects, which are still composed of the same eternal atoms whose motion for a while is incorporated into the created entity. Human sensations and meteorological phenomena are also explained by Lucretius in terms of atomic motion.

Atomism and ethics[link]

Some later philosophers attributed the idea that man created gods; the gods did not create man to Democritus. For example, Sextus Empiricus noted:

Some people think that we arrived at the idea of gods from the remarkable things that happen in the world. Democritus ... says that the people of ancient times were frightened by happenings in the heavens such as thunder, lightning, ..., and thought that they were caused by gods.^[16]

Three hundred years after Epicurus, Lucretius in his epic poem On the Nature of Things would depict him as the hero who crushed the monster Religion through educating the people in what was possible in the atoms and what was not possible in the atoms. However, Epicurus expressed a non-aggressive attitude characterized by his statement: "The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can; and those he can not, he at any rate does not treat as aliens; and where he finds even this impossible, he avoids all dealings, and, so far as is advantageous, excludes them from his life." [1]

The exile of atomism[link]

While Aristotelian philosophy eclipsed the importance of the atomists, their work was still preserved and exposited through commentaries on the works of Aristotle. In the 2nd century, Galen (AD 129–216) presented extensive discussions of the Greek atomists, especially Epicurus, in his Aristotle commentaries. According to historian of atomism Joshua Gregory, there was no serious work done with atomism from the time of Galen until Gassendi and Descartes resurrected it in the 17th century; "the gap between these two 'modern naturalists' and the ancient Atomists marked "the exile of the atom" and "it is universally admitted that the Middle Ages had abandoned Atomism, and virtually lost it." However, scholars still had Aristotle's critiques of atomism, and it seems unlikely that all ideas of atomism could have been lost in the West. In the Medieval universities there were rare expressions of atomistic philosophy. For example, in the 14th century Nicholas of Autrecourt considered that matter, space, and time were all made up of indivisible atoms, points, and instants and that all generation and corruption took place by the rearrangement of material atoms. The similarities of his ideas with those of al-Ghazali suggest that Nicholas may have been familiar with Ghazali's work, perhaps through Averroes' refutation of it (Marmara, 1973–74).

Still, "the exile of the atom" is an appropriate description of the interim between the ancient Greeks and the revival of Western atomism in the 16th century, in view of atomism's success elsewhere during that time. If the atom was in exile from the west, it was in India and Islam that atomistic traditions continued.

Indian atomism[link]

The Indian atomistic position, like many movements in Indian Philosophy and Mathematics, starts with an argument from Linguistics. The Vedic etymologist and grammarian Yaska (ca. 7th c. BC) in his Nirukta, in dealing with models for how linguistic structures get to have their meanings, takes the atomistic position that words are the "primary" carrier of meaning – i.e. words have a preferred ontological status in defining meaning. This position was to be the subject of a fierce debate in the Indian tradition from the early Christian era till the 18th century, involving different philosophers from the Nyaya, Mimamsa and Buddhist schools.

In the pratishakhya text (ca. 2nd c. BCE), the gist of the controversy was stated cryptically in the sutra form as "saMhitA pada-prakr^tiH".^[17] According to the atomist view, the words (pada) would be the primary elements (prakrti) out of which the sentence is constructed, while the holistic view considers the sentence as the primary entity, originally "given" in its context of utterance, and the words are arrived at only through analysis and abstraction.^[18]

These two positions came to be called a-kShaNDa-pakSha (indivisibility or sentence-holism), a position developed later by Bhartrihari (c. 500 AD), vs. kShaNDa-pakSha (atomism), a position adopted by the Mimamsa and Nyaya schools (Note: kShanDa = fragmented; "a-kShanDa" = whole).

Between the 5th and 3rd century BC, the atom (anu or aṇor) is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 8, Verse 9):

kaviḿ purāṇam anuśāsitāram aṇor aṇīyāḿsam anusmared yaḥ sarvasya dhātāram acintya-rūpam āditya-varṇaḿ tamasaḥ parastāt
One meditates on the omniscient, primordial, the controller, smaller than the atom, yet the maintainer of everything; whose form is inconceivable, resplendent like the sun and totally transcendental to material nature

The ancient "shAshvata-vAda" doctrine of eternalism, which held that elements are eternal, is also suggestive of a possible starting point for atomism (Gangopadhyaya 1981).

There has been some debate among scholars as to the origin of Indian atomism; the general consensus is that the Indian and Greek versions of atomism developed independently. However, there is some doubt on this, given the similarities between Indian atomism and Greek atomism and the proximity of India to scholastic Europe, as well as the account, related by Diogenes Laertius, of Democritus "making acquaintance with the Gymnosophists in India".^[19] The atomist position had transcended language into epistemology by the time that Nyaya–Vaisesika, Buddhist and Jaina theology were developing mature philosophical positions.

Will Durant wrote in Our Oriental Heritage:

"Two systems of Indian thought propound physical theories suggestively similar to those of Greece. Kanada, founder of the Vaisheshika philosophy, held that the world was composed of atoms as many in kind as the various elements. The Jains more nearly approximated to Democritus by teaching that all atoms were of the same kind, producing different effects by diverse modes of combinations. Kanada believed light and heat to be varieties of the same substance; Udayana taught that all heat comes from the sun; and Vachaspati, like Newton, interpreted light as composed of minute particles emitted by substances and striking the eye."

Indian atomism in the Middle Ages was still mostly philosophical and/or religious in intent, though it was also scientific. Because the "infallible Vedas", the oldest Hindu texts, do not mention atoms (though they do mention elements), atomism was not orthodox in many schools of Hindu philosophy, although accommodationist interpretations or assumptions of lost text justified the use of atomism for non-orthodox schools of Hindu thought. The Buddhist and Jaina schools of atomism however, were more willing to accept the ideas of atomism.

Nyaya–Vaisesika school[link]

The Nyaya–Vaisesika school developed one of the earliest forms of atomism; scholars date the Nyaya and Vaisesika texts from the 6th to 1st centuries BC. Like the Buddhist atomists, the Vaisesika had a pseudo-Aristotelian theory of atomism. They posited the four elemental atom types, but in Vaisesika physics atoms had 24 different possible qualities, divided between general extensive properties and specific (intensive) properties. Like the Jaina school, the Nyaya–Vaisesika atomists had elaborate theories of how atoms combine. In both Jaina and Vaisesika atomism, atoms first combine in pairs (dyads), and then group into trios of pairs (triads), which are the smallest visible units of matter.^[20]

Buddhist school[link]

The Buddhist atomists had very qualitative, Aristotelian-style atomic theory. According to ancient Buddhist atomism, which probably began developing before the 4th century BC, there are four kinds of atoms, corresponding to the standard elements. Each of these elements has a specific property, such as solidity or motion, and performs a specific function in mixtures, such as providing support or causing growth. Like the Hindu Jains, the Buddhists were able to integrate a theory of atomism with their theological presuppositions. Later Indian Buddhist philosophers, such as Dharmakirti and Dignāga, considered atoms to be point-sized, durationless, and made of energy.

Jaina school[link]

The most elaborate and well-preserved Indian theory of atomism comes from the philosophy of the Jaina school, dating back to at least the 6th century BC. Some of the Jain texts that refer to matter and atoms are Pancastikayasara, Kalpasutra, Tattvarthasutra and Pannavana Suttam. The Jains envisioned the world as consisting wholly of atoms, except for souls. Paramāņus or atoms were considered as the basic building blocks of all matter. Their concept of atoms was very similar to classical atomism, differing primarily in the specific properties of atoms. Each atom, according to Jain philosophy, has one kind of taste, one smell, one color, and two kinds of touch, though it is unclear what was meant by "kind of touch". Atoms can exist in one of two states: subtle, in which case they can fit in infinitesimally small spaces, and gross, in which case they have extension and occupy a finite space. Certain characteristics of Paramāņu correspond with that sub-atomic particles. For example Paramāņu is characterized by continuous motion either in a straight line or in case of attractions from other Paramāņus, it follows a curved path. This corresponds with the description of orbit of electrons across the Nucleus. Ultimate particles are also described as particles with positive (Snigdha i.e. smooth charge) and negative (Rūksa – rough) charges that provide them the binding force. Although atoms are made of the same basic substance, they can combine based on their eternal properties to produce any of six "aggregates", which seem to correspond with the Greek concept of "elements": earth, water, shadow, sense objects, karmic matter, and unfit matter. To the Jains, karma was real, but was a naturalistic, mechanistic phenomenon caused by buildups of subtle karmic matter within the soul. They also had detailed theories of how atoms could combine, react, vibrate, move, and perform other actions, all of which were thoroughly deterministic.

Islamic atomism[link]

Atomistic philosophies are found very early in Islamic philosophy, and represent a synthesis of the Greek and Indian ideas. Like both the Greek and Indian versions, Islamic atomism was a charged topic that had the potential for conflict with the prevalent religious orthodoxy, but it was instead more often favoured by orthodox Islamic theologians. It was such a fertile and flexible idea that, as in Greece and India, it flourished in some leading schools of Islamic thought.

Asharite atomism[link]

The most successful form of Islamic atomism was in the Asharite school of Islamic theology, most notably in the work of the theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111). In Asharite atomism, atoms are the only perpetual, material things in existence, and all else in the world is "accidental" meaning something that lasts for only an instant. Nothing accidental can be the cause of anything else, except perception, as it exists for a moment. Contingent events are not subject to natural physical causes, but are the direct result of God's constant intervention, without which nothing could happen. Thus nature is completely dependent on God, which meshes with other Asharite Islamic ideas on causation, or the lack thereof (Gardet 2001). Al-Ghazali also used the theory to support his theory of occasionalism. In a sense, the Asharite theory of atomism has far more in common with Indian atomism than it does with Greek atomism.^[21]

Averroism[link]

Other traditions in Islam rejected the atomism of the Asharites and expounded on many Greek texts, especially those of Aristotle. An active school of philosophers in Spain, including the noted commentator Averroes (AD 1126–1198) explicitly rejected the thought of al-Ghazali and turned to an extensive evaluation of the thought of Aristotle. Averroes commented in detail on most of the works of Aristotle and his commentaries did much to guide the interpretation of Aristotle in later Jewish and Christian scholastic thought.

Atomic renaissance[link]

With few exceptions, much of the curriculum in the universities of Europe was based on Aristotle for most of the Middle Ages (Kargon 1966). Scholasticism was standard science in the time of Isaac Newton, but in the 17th century, a renewed interest in Epicurian atomism and Corpuscularianism as a hybrid or an alternative to Aristotelian physics had begun to mount outside the classroom. The main figures in the rebirth of atomism were René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Robert Boyle, as well as other notable figures.

One of the first groups of atomists in England was a cadre of amateur scientists known as the Northumberland circle, led by Henry Percy (1585–1632), the 9th Earl of Northumberland. Although they published little of account, they helped to disseminate atomistic ideas among the burgeoning scientific culture of England, and may have been particularly influential to Francis Bacon, who became an atomist around 1605, though he later rejected some of the claims of atomism. Though they revived the classical form of atomism, this group was among the scientific avant-garde: the Northumberland circle contained nearly half of the confirmed Copernicans prior to 1610 (the year of Galileo's The Starry Messenger). Other influential atomists of late 16th and early 17th centuries include Giordano Bruno, Thomas Hobbes (who also changed his stance on atomism late in his career), and Thomas Hariot. A number of different atomistic theories were blossoming in France at this time, as well (Clericuzio 2000).

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was an advocate of atomism in his 1612, Discourse on Floating Bodies (Redondi 1969). In The Assayer, Galileo offered a more complete physical system based on a corpuscular theory of matter, in which all phenomena—with the exception of sound—are produced by "matter in motion". Galileo identified some basic problems with Aristotelian physics through his experiments. He utilized a theory of atomism as a partial replacement, but he was never unequivocally committed to it. For example, his experiments with falling bodies and inclined planes led him to the concepts of circular inertial motion and accelerating free-fall. The current Aristotelian theories of impetus and terrestrial motion were inadequate to explain these. While atomism did not explain the law of fall either, it was a more promising framework in which to develop an explanation because motion was conserved in ancient atomism (unlike Aristotelian physics).

René Descartes' (1596–1650) "mechanical" philosophy of corpuscularism had much in common with atomism, and is considered, in some senses, to be a different version of it. Descartes thought everything physical in the universe to be made of tiny vortices of matter. Like the ancient atomists, Descartes claimed that sensations, such as taste or temperature, are caused by the shape and size of tiny pieces of matter. The main difference between atomism and Descartes' concept was the existence of the void. For him, there could be no vacuum, and all matter was constantly swirling to prevent a void as corpuscles moved through other matter. Another key distinction between Descartes' view and classical atomism is the mind/body duality of Descartes, which allowed for an independent realm of existence for thought, soul, and most importantly, God. Gassendi's concept was closer to classical atomism, but with no atheistic overtone.

Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) was a Catholic priest from France who was also an avid natural philosopher. He was particularly intrigued by the Greek atomists, so he set out to "purify" atomism from its heretical and atheistic philosophical conclusions (Dijksterhius 1969). Gassendi formulated his atomistic conception of mechanical philosophy partly in response to Descartes; he particularly opposed Descartes' reductionist view that only purely mechanical explanations of physics are valid, as well as the application of geometry to the whole of physics (Clericuzio 2000).

Corpuscularianism[link]

Corpuscularianism is similar to atomism, except that where atoms were supposed to be indivisible, corpuscles could in principle be divided. In this manner, for example, it was theorized that mercury could penetrate into metals and modify their inner structure, a step on the way towards transmutative production of gold. Corpuscularianism was associated by its leading proponents with the idea that some of the properties that objects appear to have are artifacts of the perceiving mind: 'secondary' qualities as distinguished from 'primary' qualities.^[22] Not all corpuscularianism made use of the primary-secondary quality distinction, however. An influential tradition in medieval and early modern alchemy argued that chemical analysis revealed the existence of robust corpuscles that retained their identity in chemical compounds (to use the modern term). William R. Newman has dubbed this approach to matter theory "chymical atomism," and has argued for its significance to both the mechanical philosophy and to the chemical atomism that emerged in the early nineteenth century^[23] Corpuscularianism stayed a dominant theory over the next several hundred years and retained its links with alchemy in the work of scientists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton in the 17th century.^[24][25] It was used by Newton, for instance, in his development of the corpuscular theory of light. The form that came to be accepted by most English scientists after Robert Boyle (1627–1692) was an amalgam of the systems of Descartes and Gassendi. In The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Boyle demonstrates problems that arise from chemistry, and offers up atomism as a possible explanation. The unifying principle that would eventually lead to the acceptance of a hybrid corpuscular–atomism was mechanical philosophy, which became widely accepted by physical sciences.

Atomic theory[link]

By the late 18th century, the useful practices of engineering and technology began to influence philosophical explanations for the composition of matter. Those who speculated on the ultimate nature of matter began to verify their "thought experiments" with some repeatable demonstrations, when they could.

Roger Boscovich provided the first general mathematical theory of atomism, based on the ideas of Newton and Leibniz but transforming them so as to provide a programme for atomic physics. – Lancelot Law Whyte Essay on Atomism, 1961, p 54.

In 1808, John Dalton assimilated the known experimental work of many people to summarize the empirical evidence on the composition of matter. He noticed that distilled water everywhere analyzed to the same elements, hydrogen and oxygen. Similarly, other purified substances decomposed to the same elements in the same proportions by weight.

Therefore we may conclude that the ultimate particles of all homogeneous bodies are perfectly alike in weight, figure, etc. In other words, every particle of water is like every other particle of water; every particle of hydrogen is like every other particle of hydrogen, etc.

Furthermore, he concluded that there was a unique atom for each element, using Lavoisier's definition of an element as a substance that could not be analyzed into something simpler. Thus, Dalton concluded the following.

Chemical analysis and synthesis go no farther than to the separation of particles one from another, and to their reunion. No new creation or destruction of matter is within the reach of chemical agency. We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen. All the changes we can produce, consist in separating particles that are in a state of cohesion or combination, and joining those that were previously at a distance.

And then he proceeded to give a list of relative weights in the compositions of several common compounds, summarizing: [2]

1st. That water is a binary compound of hydrogen and oxygen, and the relative weights of the two elementary atoms are as 1:7, nearly;

2nd. That ammonia is a binary compound of hydrogen and azote nitrogen, and the relative weights of the two atoms are as 1:5, nearly...

Dalton concluded that the fixed proportions of elements by weight suggested that the atoms of one element combined with only a limited number of atoms of the other elements to form the substances that he listed.

See also[link]

• Becoming (philosophy)
• History of chemistry
• Infinite divisibility
• Ontological pluralism
• Physical ontology

External links[link]

Look up atomism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Atomism: Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Atomism in the Seventeenth Century
• Jonathan Schaffer, "Is There a Fundamental Level?" Nous 37 (2003): 498-517.[3] Article by a philosopher who opposes atomism
• Article on traditional Greek atomism
• Atomism from the 17th to the 20th Century at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Clericuzio, Antonio. Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles; a study of atomism and chemistry in the seventeenth century. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
• Cornford, Francis MacDonald. Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957.
• Dijksterhuis, E. The Mechanization of the World Picture. Trans. by C. Dikshoorn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. ISBN 0-691-02396-4
• Firth, Raymond. Religion: A Humanist Interpretation. Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-12897-8.
• Gangopadhyaya, Mrinalkanti. Indian Atomism: history and sources. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1981. ISBN 0-391-02177-X
• Gardet, L. "djuz'" in Encyclopaedia of Islam CD-ROM Edition, v. 1.1. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
• Gregory, Joshua C. A Short History of Atomism. London: A. and C. Black, Ltd, 1981.
• Kargon, Robert Hugh. Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
• Lloyd, G. E. R. Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of his Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. ISBN 0-521-09456-9
• Lloyd, G. E. R. Greek Science After Aristotle. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. ISBN 0-393-00780-4
• Marmara, Michael E. "Causation in Islamic Thought." Dictionary of the History of Ideas. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973-74. online at the of Virginia Electronic Text Center.
• Redondi, Pietro. Galileo Heretic. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-691-02426-X
• McEvilley, Thomas (2002). The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. New York: Allworth Communications Inc. ISBN 1-58115-203-5.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

Born	(1872-05-18)18 May 1872 Trellech, Monmouthshire, UK
Died	2 February 1970(1970-02-02) (aged 97) Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales, UK
Era	20th century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy Nobel Prize in Literature 1950
Main interests	Metaphysics epistemology logic mathematics philosophy of language philosophy of science ethics philosophy of religion history of philosophy
Notable ideas	Analytic philosophy · Logical atomism · theory of descriptions · knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description · Russell's paradox · Russell's teapot
Influenced by Mill · Peano · Frege · Santayana · Leibniz · Hume · Locke · Wittgenstein · Spinoza · Whitehead
Influenced Wittgenstein · Ayer · Carnap · Gödel · Popper · Quine · Chomsky · Austin · Kripke · Schlick · Tarski · Waismann · Davidson · Eddington · Turing · Vuillemin · McDowell · Kumar · Albert Ellis
Signature

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS^[1] (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic.^[2] At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense.^[3] He was born in Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain.^[4]

Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 20th century. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his friend Ludwig Wittgenstein, and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians.^[2] He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy."^[5] His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, computer science (see type theory and type system), and philosophy, especially philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.

Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism^[6][7] and went to prison for his pacifism during World War I.^[8] Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.^[9]

A prolific commentator on religion, Russell—along with others such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche—advanced a "new school of thought" that Greg Epstein calls "antagonistic atheism", which was "the view that religion was a thing of the past and ought to be brought hastily toward a point of declining influence".^[10] In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."^[11]

Biography[link]

Ancestry[link]

Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, Wales, into an influential and liberal family of the British aristocracy.^[12] His paternal grandfather, John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, was the third son of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, and had twice been asked by Queen Victoria to form a government, serving her as Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s.^[13]

Bertrand Russell's father, John Russell, Viscount Amberley

The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power and the peerage with the rise of the Tudor dynasty. They established themselves as one of Britain's leading Whig families, and participated in every great political event from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–40 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688–89 and the Great Reform Act in 1832.^[13][14]

Russell's mother, Katharine Louisa (1844–1874), was the daughter of Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, and the sister of Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle.^[9] Kate and Rosalind's mother was one of the founders of Girton College, Cambridge.^[15]

Russell's parents were radical for their times. Russell's father, Viscount Amberley, was an atheist and consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous.^[16] John Russell's atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russell's secular godfather.^[17] Mill died the year after Russell's birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russell's life.

Childhood and adolescence[link]

Russell had two siblings: Frank (nearly seven years older than Bertrand), and Rachel (four years older). In June 1874 Russell's mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachel's death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis following a long period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian grandparents, who lived at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. His grandfather, who had been Prime Minister, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell (née Lady Frances Elliot), was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russell's childhood and youth.^[9][16]

The countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberley's will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Despite her religious conservatism, she held progressive views in other areas (accepting Darwinism and supporting Irish Home Rule), and her influence on Bertrand Russell's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life—her favourite Bible verse, 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil' (Exodus 23:2), became his motto. The atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression, and formality; Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings.

Russell's adolescence was very lonely, and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that his keenest interests were in religion and mathematics, and that only the wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide.^[18] He was educated at home by a series of tutors.^[11] His brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which transformed Russell's life.^[16][19]

During these formative years he also discovered the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In his autobiography, he writes: "I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart, knowing no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much sympathy."^[20] Russell claimed that beginning at age 15, he spent considerable time thinking about the validity of Christian religious dogma, and by 18 had decided to discard the last of it.^[21]

University and first marriage[link]

Russell won a scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, and commenced his studies there in 1890.^[22] He became acquainted with the younger George Edward Moore and came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead, who recommended him to the Cambridge Apostles. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy, graduating as a high Wrangler in 1893 and becoming a Fellow in the latter in 1895.^[23][24]

Russell first met the American Quaker Alys Pearsall Smith when he was 17 years old. He became a friend of the Pearsall Smith family—they knew him primarily as 'Lord John's grandson' and enjoyed showing him off—and travelled with them to the continent; it was in their company that Russell visited the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and was able to climb the Eiffel Tower soon after it was completed.^[25]

He soon fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, who was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, and, contrary to his grandmother's wishes, married her on 13 December 1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was cycling, that he no longer loved her. She asked him if he loved her and he replied that he didn't. Russell also disliked Alys's mother, finding her controlling and cruel. It was to be a hollow shell of a marriage and they finally divorced in 1921, after a lengthy period of separation.^[26] During this period, Russell had passionate (and often simultaneous) affairs with a number of women, including Lady Ottoline Morrell^[27] and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.^[28]

Early career[link]

Russell in 1907.

Russell began his published work in 1896 with German Social Democracy, a study in politics that was an early indication of a lifelong interest in political and social theory. In 1896 he taught German social democracy at the London School of Economics, where he also lectured on the science of power in the autumn of 1937.^[29] He was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.^[30]

He now started an intensive study of the foundations of mathematics at Trinity, during which he discovered Russell's paradox, which challenged the foundations of set theory. In 1903 he published his first important book on mathematical logic, The Principles of Mathematics, arguing that mathematics could be deduced from a very small number of principles, a work which contributed significantly to the cause of logicism.^[31]

In 1905 he wrote the essay "On Denoting", which was published in the philosophical journal Mind. Russell became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908.^[1][9] The first of three volumes of Principia Mathematica, written with Whitehead, was published in 1910, which, along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, soon made Russell world famous in his field.

In 1910 he became a lecturer in the University of Cambridge, where he was approached by the Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student. Russell viewed Wittgenstein as a genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours dealing with Wittgenstein's various phobias and his frequent bouts of despair. This was often a drain on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1922.^[32] Russell delivered his lectures on Logical Atomism, his version of these ideas, in 1918, before the end of the First World War. Wittgenstein was still a prisoner of war.

First World War[link]

During the First World War, Russell was one of the very few people to engage in active pacifist activities,^[33] and in 1916, he was dismissed from Trinity College following his conviction under the Defence of the Realm Act.

He was charged a fine of £100, which he refused to pay, hoping that he would be sent to prison, However, his books were sold at auction to raise the money. The books were bought by friends; he later treasured his copy of the King James Bible that was stamped "Confiscated by Cambridge Police."

Russell was released from prison in September 1918.^{[clarification needed]} He was reinstated in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer 1926, and became a Fellow again 1944–1949.^[34] A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the US to enter the war on Britain's side resulted in six months' imprisonment in Brixton prison (see Bertrand Russell's views on society).^[35]

Between the wars and second marriage[link]

In August 1920 Russell travelled to Russia as part of an official delegation sent by the British government to investigate the effects of the Russian Revolution.^[36] He met Vladimir Lenin and had an hour-long conversation with him. In his autobiography, he mentions that he found Lenin rather disappointing, sensing an "impish cruelty" in him and comparing him to "an opinionated professor". He cruised down the Volga on a steamship. Russell's lover, Dora Black, visited Russia independently at the same time—she was enthusiastic about the revolution, but Russell's experiences destroyed his previous tentative support for it. He wrote a book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism^[37] about his experiences on this trip, taken with a group of 24 others from Britain, all of whom came home thinking well of the regime, despite Russell's attempts to change their minds. For example, he told them that he heard shots fired in the middle of the night and was sure these were clandestine executions, but the others maintained that it was only cars backfiring.

Russell subsequently lectured in Beijing on philosophy for one year, accompanied by Dora. He went there with optimism and hope, as China was then on a new path. Other scholars present in China at the time included Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate Indian poet.^[11] While in China, Russell became gravely ill with pneumonia, and incorrect reports of his death were published in the Japanese press.^[38] When the couple visited Japan on their return journey, Dora notified the world that "Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according to the Japanese press, is unable to give interviews to Japanese journalists." The press, not appreciating the sarcasm, were not amused.^[39]

Dora was six months pregnant when the couple returned to England on 26 August 1921. Russell arranged a hasty divorce from Alys, marrying Dora six days after the divorce was finalised, on 27 September 1921. Their children were John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell, born on 16 November 1921, and Katharine Jane Russell (now Lady Katharine Tait), born on 29 December 1923. Russell supported himself during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics, and education to the layman. Some have suggested that at this point he had an affair with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, first wife of T. S. Eliot.^[40]

Together with Dora, he founded the experimental Beacon Hill School in 1927. The school was run from a succession of different locations, including its original premises at the Russells' residence, Telegraph House, near Harting, West Sussex. On 8 July 1930 Dora gave birth to her third child, a daughter, Harriet Ruth. After he left the school in 1932, Dora continued it until 1943.^[41][42]

Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became the 3rd Earl Russell. He once said that his title was primarily useful for securing hotel rooms.

Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her having two children with an American journalist, Griffin Barry.^[42] They separated in 1932 and finally divorced. On 18 January 1936, Russell married his third wife, an Oxford undergraduate named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, who had been his children's governess since 1930. Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell, who became a prominent historian and one of the leading figures in the Liberal Democratic party.^[9]

During the 1930s, Russell became a close friend and collaborator of V.K. Krishna Menon, then secretary of the India League, the foremost lobby for Indian independence in Great Britain.

Second World War[link]

Russell opposed rearmament against Nazi Germany, but in 1940 changed his view that avoiding a full scale world war was more important than defeating Hitler. He concluded that Adolf Hitler taking over all of Europe would be a permanent threat to democracy. In 1943, he adopted a stance toward large-scale warfare, "Relative Political Pacifism": war was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils.^[43]

Before the Second World War, Russell taught at the University of Chicago, later moving on to Los Angeles to lecture at the UCLA Department of Philosophy. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York in 1940, but after a public outcry, the appointment was annulled by a court judgement: his opinions (especially those relating to sexual morality, detailed in Marriage and Morals ten years earlier) made him "morally unfit" to teach at the college. The protest was started by the mother of a student who would not have been eligible for his graduate-level course in mathematical logic. Many intellectuals, led by John Dewey, protested against his treatment.^[44] Albert Einstein's often-quoted aphorism that "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds ... " originated in his open letter in support of Russell, during this time.^[45] Dewey and Horace M. Kallen edited a collection of articles on the CCNY affair in The Bertrand Russell Case. He soon joined the Barnes Foundation, lecturing to a varied audience on the history of philosophy; these lectures formed the basis of A History of Western Philosophy. His relationship with the eccentric Albert C. Barnes soon soured, and he returned to Britain in 1944 to rejoin the faculty of Trinity College.^[46]

Later life[link]

During the 1940s and 1950s, Russell participated in many broadcasts over the BBC, particularly The Brains Trust and the Third Programme, on various topical and philosophical subjects. By this time Russell was world famous outside of academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and was called upon to offer opinions on a wide variety of subjects, even mundane ones. En route to one of his lectures in Trondheim, Russell was one of 24 survivors (among a total of 43 passengers) in an aeroplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane.^[47] A History of Western Philosophy (1945) became a best-seller, and provided Russell with a steady income for the remainder of his life.

In a speech in 1948,^[48] Russell said that if the USSR's aggression continued, it would be morally worse to go to war after the USSR possessed an atomic bomb than before it possessed one, because if the USSR had no bomb the West's victory would come more swiftly and with fewer casualties than if there were atom bombs on both sides. At that time, only the United States possessed an atomic bomb, and the USSR was pursuing an extremely aggressive policy towards the countries in Eastern Europe which it was absorbing into its sphere of influence. Many understood Russell's comments to mean that Russell approved of a first strike in a war with the USSR, including Nigel Lawson, who was present when Russell spoke. Others, including Griffin, who obtained a transcript of the speech, have argued that he was merely explaining the usefulness of America's atomic arsenal in deterring the USSR from continuing its domination of Eastern Europe.^[47]

In 1948, Russell was invited by the BBC to deliver the inaugural Reith Lectures^[49]—what was to become an annual series of lectures, still broadcast by the BBC. His series of six broadcasts, titled Authority and the Individual,^[50] explored themes such as the role of individual initiative in the development of a community and the role of state control in a progressive society. Russell continued to write about philosophy. He wrote a foreword to Words and Things by Ernest Gellner, which was highly critical of the later thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and of Ordinary language philosophy. Gilbert Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal Mind, which caused Russell to respond via The Times. The result was a month-long correspondence in The Times between the supporters and detractors of ordinary language philosophy, which was only ended when the paper published an editorial critical of both sides but agreeing with the opponents of ordinary language philosophy.^[51]

In the King's Birthday Honours of 9 June 1949, Russell was awarded the Order of Merit,^[52] and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[9][11] When he was given the Order of Merit, King George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating a former jailbird, saying that "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted."^[53] Russell merely smiled, but afterwards claimed that the reply "That's right, just like your brother" immediately came to mind.

In 1952 Russell was divorced by Spence, with whom he had been very unhappy. Conrad, Russell's son by Spence, did not see his father between the time of the divorce and 1968 (at which time his decision to meet his father caused a permanent breach with his mother).

Russell married his fourth wife, Edith Finch, soon after the divorce, on 15 December 1952. They had known each other since 1925, and Edith had taught English at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, sharing a house for 20 years with Russell's old friend Lucy Donnelly. Edith remained with him until his death, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy, close, and loving one. Russell's eldest son, John, suffered from serious mental illness, which was the source of ongoing disputes between Russell and John's mother, Russell's former wife, Dora. John's wife Susan was also mentally ill, and eventually Russell and Edith became the legal guardians of their three daughters^{[citation needed]}(two of whom were later found to have schizophrenia).

In 1962 Russell played a public role in the Cuban Missile Crisis: in an exchange of telegrams with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev assured him that the Soviet government would not be reckless.^[54] Russell also wrote to John F. Kennedy, who returned his telegram unopened.^{[citation needed]}

According to historian Peter Knight, after the John F. Kennedy assassination, Russell, "prompted by the emerging work of the lawyer Mark Lane in the US ... rallied support from other noteworthy and left-leaning compatriots to form a Who Killed Kennedy Committee in June 1964, members of which included Michael Foot MP, the wife of Tony Benn MP, the publisher Victor Gollancz, the writers John Arden and J. B. Priestley, and the Oxford history professor Hugh Trevor-Roper. Russell published a highly critical article weeks before the Warren Commission Report was published, setting forth 16 Questions on the Assassination and equating the Oswald case with the Dreyfus affair of late 19th century France, in which the state wrongly convicted an innocent man. Russell also criticized the American press for failing to heed any voices critical of the official version.^[55]

Political causes[link]

Russell spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in various political causes, primarily related to nuclear disarmament and opposing the Vietnam war (see also Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal). The 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto was a document calling for nuclear disarmament and was signed by 11 of the most prominent nuclear physicists and intellectuals of the time.^[56] He wrote a great many letters to world leaders during this period. He was in contact with Lionel Rogosin while the latter was filming his anti-war film Good Times, Wonderful Times in the 1960s. He became a hero to many of the youthful members of the New Left. In early 1963, in particular, Russell became increasingly vocal about his disapproval of what he felt to be the US government's near-genocidal policies in South Vietnam. In 1963 he became the inaugural recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, an award for writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society.^[57] In October 1965 he tore up his Labour Party card because he suspected the party was going to send soldiers to support the US in the Vietnam War.^[9]

Final years and death[link]

Bust of Russell in Red Lion Square

Russell published his three-volume autobiography in 1967, 1968, and 1969. On 23 November 1969 he wrote to The Times newspaper saying that the preparation for show trials in Czechoslovakia was "highly alarming". The same month, he appealed to Secretary General U Thant of the United Nations to support an international war crimes commission to investigate alleged torture and genocide by the US in South Vietnam. The following month, he protested to Alexei Kosygin over the expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Writers Union.

On 31 January 1970 Russell issued a statement which condemned Israeli aggression in the Middle East and called for Israeli withdrawal from the Israeli-occupied territories. This was Russell's final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo on 3 February 1970, the day after his death.^[58]

Russell died of influenza on 2 February 1970 at his home, Plas Penrhyn, in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales. His body was cremated in Colwyn Bay on 5 February 1970. In accordance with his will, there was no religious ceremony; his ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains later that year.

In 1980 a memorial to Russell was commissioned by a committee including the philosopher A. J. Ayer. It consists of a bust of Russell in Red Lion Square in London sculpted by Marcelle Quinton.^[59]

Titles and honours from birth[link]

Russell held throughout his life the following styles and honours:

• from birth until 1908: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell
• from 1908 until 1931: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell, FRS
• from 1931 until 1949: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, FRS
• from 1949 until death: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, OM, FRS

Views[link]

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Russell in 1916
Views on philosophy Views on society Russell's paradox Russell's teapot Theory of Descriptions Logical atomism
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Views on philosophy[link]

Russell is generally credited with being one of the founders of analytic philosophy. He was deeply impressed by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), and wrote on every major area of philosophy except aesthetics. He was particularly prolific in the field of metaphysics, the logic and the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, ethics and epistemology. When Brand Blanshard asked Russell why he didn't write on aesthetics, Russell replied that he didn't know anything about it, "but that is not a very good excuse, for my friends tell me it has not deterred me from writing on other subjects."^[60]

Views on religion[link]

Russell described himself both as an agnostic^[61] and an atheist. For most of his adult life Russell maintained that religion is little more than superstition and, despite any positive effects that religion might have, it is largely harmful to people. He believed religion and the religious outlook (he considered communism and other systematic ideologies to be forms of religion) serve to impede knowledge, foster fear and dependency, and are responsible for much of the war, oppression, and misery that have beset the world. He was a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association and President of Cardiff Humanists until his death.^[62]

Views on society[link]

Political and social activism occupied much of Russell's time for most of his life, which makes his prodigious and seminal writing on a wide range of technical and non-technical subjects all the more remarkable. Russell remained politically active almost to the end of his life, writing to and exhorting world leaders and lending his name to various causes. He was noted for saying "No one can sit at the bedside of a dying child and still believe in God."^[63]

Russell determined man to be "the product of causes ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms, that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand ... "^[64]

Selected works[link]

Selected bibliography of Russell's books[link]

This is a selected bibliography of Russell's books in English sorted by year of first publication.

• 1896. German Social Democracy. London: Longmans, Green.
• 1897. An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 1900. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 1903. The Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge University Press.
• 1905. On Denoting, Mind, vol. 14. ISSN: 00264425. Basil Blackwell.
• 1910. Philosophical Essays. London: Longmans, Green.
• 1910–1913. Principia Mathematica (with Alfred North Whitehead). 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 1912. The Problems of Philosophy. London: Williams and Norgate.
• 1914. Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing.
• 1916. Why Men Fight. New York: The Century Co.
• 1916. Justice in War-time. Chicago: Open Court.
• 1917. Political Ideals. New York: The Century Co.
• 1918. Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays. London: Longmans, Green.
• 1918. Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1919. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin. (ISBN 0-415-09604-9 for Routledge paperback) (Copy at Archive.org).
• 1920. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1921. The Analysis of Mind. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1922. The Problem of China. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1923. The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, in collaboration with Dora Russell. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1923. The ABC of Atoms, London: Kegan Paul. Trench, Trubner.
• 1924. Icarus; or, The Future of Science. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1925. The ABC of Relativity. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1925. What I Believe. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1926. On Education, Especially in Early Childhood. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1927. The Analysis of Matter. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• 1927. An Outline of Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1927. Why I Am Not a Christian. London: Watts.
• 1927. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell. New York: Modern Library.
• 1928. Sceptical Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1929. Marriage and Morals. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1930. The Conquest of Happiness. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1931. The Scientific Outlook. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1932. Education and the Social Order, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1934. Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1935. In Praise of Idleness. London: George Allen & Unwin. (on refusal of work)
• 1935. Religion and Science. London: Thornton Butterworth.
• 1936. Which Way to Peace?. London: Jonathan Cape.
• 1937. The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley, with Patricia Russell, 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press.
• 1938. Power: A New Social Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1940. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
• 1945. A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1949. Authority and the Individual. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1950. Unpopular Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1951. New Hopes for a Changing World. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1952. The Impact of Science on Society. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1953. Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1954. Human Society in Ethics and Politics. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1954. Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1956. Portraits from Memory and Other Essays. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1956. Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, edited by Robert C. Marsh. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1957. Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, edited by Paul Edwards. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1958. Understanding History and Other Essays. New York: Philosophical Library.
• 1959. Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1959. My Philosophical Development. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1959. Wisdom of the West, edited by Paul Foulkes. London: Macdonald.
• 1960. Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company.
• 1961. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, edited by R.E. Egner and L.E. Denonn. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1961. Fact and Fiction. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1961. Has Man a Future?, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1963. Essays in Skepticism. New York: Philosophical Library.
• 1963. Unarmed Victory. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1965. On the Philosophy of Science, edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
• 1967. Russell's Peace Appeals, edited by Tsutomu Makino and Kazuteru Hitaka. Japan: Eichosha's New Current Books.
• 1967. War Crimes in Vietnam. London: George Allen & Unwin.
• 1951–1969. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols.. London: George Allen & Unwin. Vol 2 1956
• 1969. Dear Bertrand Russell... A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950–1968, edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Russell also wrote many pamphlets, introductions, articles, and letters to the editor. One pamphlet titled, I Appeal unto Caesar: the case of the conscientious objectors, ghost written for Margaret Hobhouse, the mother of imprisoned peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse helped to secure the release of hundreds of CO's from prison.^[65]

His works can be found in anthologies and collections, perhaps most notably The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, which McMaster University began publishing in 1983. This collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works is now up to 16 volumes, and many more are forthcoming. An additional three volumes catalogue just his bibliography. The Russell Archives at McMaster University possess over 30,000 of his letters.

See also[link]

• Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club

Notes[link]

Additional references[link]

Russell[link]

• 1900, Sur la logique des relations avec des applications à la théorie des séries, Rivista di matematica 7: 115–148.
• 1901, On the Notion of Order, Mind (n.s.) 10: 35–51.
• 1902, (with Alfred North Whitehead), On Cardinal Numbers, American Journal of Mathematics 23: 367–384.
• 1948, BBC Reith Lectures: Authority and the Individual A series of six radio lectures broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1948.

Secondary references[link]

• John Newsome Crossley. A Note on Cantor's Theorem and Russell's Paradox, Australian Journal of Philosophy 51: 70–71.
• Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940. Princeton University Press.
• Bertrand Russell: A Political Life by Alan Ryan 1981

Books about Russell's philosophy[link]

• Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, edited by A. D. Irvine, 4 volumes, London: Routledge, 1999. Consists of essays on Russell's work by many distinguished philosophers.
• Bertrand Russell, by John Slater, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994.
• Bertrand Russell's Ethics. by Michael K. Potter, Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2006. A clear and accessible explanation of Russell's moral philosophy.
• The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by P.A. Schilpp, Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944.
• Russell, by A. J. Ayer, London: Fontana, 1972. ISBN 0-00-632965-9. A lucid summary exposition of Russell's thought.
• The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem, by Celia Green. Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2003. ISBN 0-9536772-1-4 Contains a sympathetic analysis of Russell's views on causality.
• Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship, by Nicholas Griffin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Biographical books[link]

• Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist, by John Lewis (1968)
• Bertrand Russell, by A. J. Ayer (1972), reprint ed. 1988: ISBN 0-226-03343-0
• My father Bertrand Russell, by Katharine Tait (1975)
• The Life of Bertrand Russell, by Ronald W. Clark (1975) ISBN 0-394-49059-2
• Bertrand Russell and His World, by Ronald W. Clark (1981) ISBN 0-500-13070-1
• Bertrand Russell: Mathematics: Dreams and Nightmares by Ray Monk (1997) ISBN 0-7538-0190-6
• Bertrand Russell: 1872–1920 The Spirit of Solitude by Ray Monk (1997) ISBN 0-09-973131-2
• Bertrand Russell: 1921–1970 The Ghost of Madness by Ray Monk (2001) ISBN 0-09-927275-X
• Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, and Christos Papadimitriou (2009)

Further reading[link]

• Bertrand Russell. 1967–1969, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 volumes, London: George Allen & Unwin.
• Wallechinsky, David & Irving Wallace. 1975–1981, "Famous Marriages Bertrand Russell & Alla Pearsall Smith, Part 1" & "Part 3", on "Alys" Pearsall Smith, webpage content from The People's Almanac, webpages: Part 1 & Part 3 (accessed 8 November 2008).
• Russell B, (1944) "My Mental Development", in Schilpp, Paul Arturn "The Philosophy of Betrand Russell", New York, Tudorm 1951, pp 3–20

External links[link]

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Other writings available online

• Works by Bertrand Russell at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Bertrand Russell on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• "A Free Man's Worship" (1903)
• "The Elements of Ethics" (1910)
• War and Non-Resistance (1915)
• The War and Non-Resistance — A Rejoinder to Professor Perry (1915)
• The Ethics of War (1915)
• Justice in Wartime (1917)
• Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel (1917)
• "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?" 1930
• Legitimacy Versus Industrialism 1814–1848 (1935)
• "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?" (1947)
• "Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind" (1950)
• "What Desires Are Politically Important?" (1950)
• An Outline of Philosophy (1951)
• Is There a God? (1952)
• Russell, Bertrand (1953). "What is an Agnostic?". Archived from the original on 2 February 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080203104023/http://www.control-z.com/pages/agnosticism.html. 
• The Scientific Outlook (1954)
• "16 Questions on the Assassination" (of President Kennedy) (1964)