Mysticism and Logic [Paperback]

Bertrand Russell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 1988

The titile essay of this collection suggests that Bertrand Russell's lifelong preoccupation: the disentanglement, with ever-increasing precision, of what is subjective or intellectualy cloudy from what is objective or capable of logical demonstration. The first five essays he calls 'entirely popular': they include two on the revolutionary changes in mathematics in the last hundred years, and one on the value of science in human culture. The last five, 'somewhat more technical', are concerned with particular problems of philosophy: the ultimate nature of matter, the connection between the sense-data and physics, the problem of casuality and different ways of knowing. In these one can see the Russell method in operation, intellectual analysis dissecting the problem to its bare bones.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (September 20, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0389201359
• ISBN-13: 978-0389201359
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,425,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970). Philosopher, mathematician, educational and sexual reformer, pacifist, prolific letter writer, author and columnist, Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential and widely known intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1950 for his extensive contributions to world literature and for his "rationality and humanity, as a fearless champion of free speech and free thought in the West."

Customer Reviews

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36 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A contradictory sort of fellow, December 21, 2000

By 

Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mysticism and Logic (Paperback)

Will Durant, in his congenial The Story of Philosophy, describes Bertrand Russell as "...resolved to be hard-headed because he knows he can not be."-This is a bit unfair, as it doesn't really take into account Russell's philosophy, merely the man. But the two are so hard to separate!-Basically, Russell believes that mysticism "is the inspirer of what is best in man." But that it is absolutely muddle-headed and has lead mankind down numerous philosophic blind alleys in the past thousand or so years (I think anyone who has read Kant or Hegel can't help but come to this conclusion).-University professors (especially those of Philosophy) are excepted from the previous parenthetical remark! -But I don't guess Russell (a Nobel prize winner in literature, by the way) matters so much anymore: This book I'm reviewing is out of print, nobody else has reviewed it and I haven't heard his name mentioned in highbrow discussions for many a year. He was a mathematical genius, wrote prose that could cut like a razor blade concerning the most abstruse subjects in a manner understandable to most laymen, and was a profound skeptic in re matters religious. This latter got him into all kinds of trouble with women's societies and the like back in the earlier part of the century and actually got him fired from the City College of New York. So he packed his bags and went to teach at Harvard.-You see, he was a British aristocrat (an Earl) and all this rabble rousing by the hoi polloi was really a non-issue for him. In his autobiography, he recounts how his mother always told him, "Never follow a crowd to do Evil." Russell never followed a crowd to do anything!-All this biographical elaboration is to help readers understand the man who wrote this book which, in a nutshell, praises the mystical impulse in its pure, unadulterated form while deploring the aforementioned philosophical muddles to which it leads, and, on the other hand, glorifies (justly) the English schools of empirical logic and the scientific progress to which they have lead. One can hardly look at this computer screen and deny this claim. All this in a lucid and thoroughly enjoyable prose. Yes, Russell has seen his days of celebrity come and go (as well as his days in general, one might add,) but if you chance by a wizened looking professor loaded down with heavyweight tomes on metaphysical systems, you might get a rather surprising response if you mention Bertie Russell. - In his day, Russell was the Mick Jagger of Philosophy, and coeds used to quarrel over who got to bed down with him that night when he came to lecture that the stuff a good proportion of their professors were teaching was, quite literally, nonsense.-And just think, he got away with it all! What fun!