The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell

by Bertrand Russell

Overview

This book has grown out of an attempt to harmonize two different tendencies, one in psychology, the other in physics, with both of which I find myself in sympathy, although at first sight they might seem inconsistent. On the one hand, many psychologists, especially those of the behaviourist school, tend to adopt what is essentially a materialistic position, as a matter of method if not of metaphysics. They make psychology increasingly dependent on physiology and external observation, and tend to think of matter as something much more solid and indubitable than mind. Meanwhile the physicists, especially Einstein and other exponents of the theory of relativity, have been making "matter" less and less material. Their world consists of "events," from which "matter" is derived by a logical construction. Whoever reads, for example, Professor Eddington's "Space, Time and Gravitation" (Cambridge University Press, 1920), will see that an old-fashioned materialism can receive no support from modern physics. I think that what has permanent value in the outlook of the behaviourists is the feeling that physics is the most fundamental science at present in existence. But this position cannot be called materialistic, if, as seems to be the case, physics does not assume the existence of matter.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013535954
Publisher:	Halcyon Press Ltd.
Publication date:	11/21/2011
Series:	Halcyon Classics , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	618 KB

About the Author

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872-1970) was an important British philosopher, historian, and social critic. A prominent free-trader and anti-Imperialist, Russell is considered to be one of the co-founders of analytic philosophy. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 and was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and of nuclear weapons.