Our Knowledge of the External World

by Bertrand Russell

Overview

'Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and acheived fewer results than any other branch of learning ... I believe that the time has now arrived when this unsatisfactory state of affairs can be brought to an end' - Bertrand Russell
So begins Our Knowledge of the Eternal World, Bertrand Russell's classic attempt to show by means of examples, the nature, capacity and limitations of the logico-analytical method in philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781317858225
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/09/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater

Read an Excerpt

LECTURE V THE THEORY OF CONTINUITY The theory of continuity, with which we shall be occupied in the present lecture, is, in most of its refinements and developments, a purely mathematical subject very beautiful, very important, and very delightful, but not, strictly speaking, a part of philosophy. The logical basis of the theory alone belongs to philosophy, and alone will occupy us to-night. The way the problem of continuity enters into philosophy is, broadly speaking, the following : Space and time are treated by mathematicians as consisting of points and instants, but they also have a property, easier to feel than to define, which is called continuity, and is thought by many philosophers to be destroyed when they are resolved into points and instants. Zeno, as we shall see, proved that analysis into points and instants was impossible if we adhered to the view that the number of points or instants in a finite space or time must be finite. Later philosophers, believing infinite number to be self-contradictory, have found here an antinomy : Spaces and times could not consist of a finite number of points and instants, for such reasons as Zeno's ; they could not consist of an infinite number of points and instants, because infinite numbers were supposed to be self-contradictory. Therefore spaces and times, if real at all, must not be regarded as composed of points and instants. But even when points and instants, as independent entities, are discarded, as they were by the theory advocated in our last lecture, the problems of continuity, as I shall try to show presently, remain, in a practically unchanged form. Let us therefore, to begin with, admit points and instants, andconsider the problems in connection with this simpler or at least more familiar hypothesis. The argu...

Table of Contents

Introduction Preface 1. Current Tendencies 2. Logic as the Essence of Philosophy 3. On Our Knowledge of the External World 3. The World of Physics and the World of Sense 4. The Theory of Continuity 5. The Problem of Infinity Considered Historically 6. The Positive Theory of Infinity 7. On the Notion of Cause, with Applications to the Free-Will Problem Index

Editorial Reviews

‘It is in every sense an epoch-making book: one that has been needed and expected for years.’ - Cambridge Magazine

‘The author maintains a fresh and brilliant yet easy style which always makes his writings a pleasure to read.’ - Nature

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