Bertrand Russell: biography of this philosopher and logician

There is a small number of authors in this world whose contributions transcended beyond their own life to touch that of those who would succeed them in the incessant flow of time, to which we are all subjected.

One of these figures is undoubtedly that of Bertrand Russell, who was able to bequeath so many and diverse works (mathematics, philosophy, logic, politics, etc.) that it is difficult to pigeonhole it in any specific area of ​​the know.

In this article we will review his life and work through a biography of Bertrand Russell, placing special emphasis on the contributions he made during his long and exceptional life.

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Brief biography of Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was born in the small town of Trellech (southeast Wales) in 1872, into an illustrious and aristocratic family of the time. His father, John Russell, was Viscount Amberley; and his mother, Katherine Louisa Stanley, was the daughter of the Baron of Alderley himself. In addition to all this,

he was the godson of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, one of the promoters (along with Jeremy Bentham) of Western utilitarianism, which is built on the usefulness of the actions understood as all the positive effects that they generate on the receiving individuals.

Despite the fact that he was fortunate to come into the world in a comfortable situation, adversity would not take long to come to his life: when he was barely six years old, the diphtheria claimed the life of his mother and his sister, driving his father into an inconsolable state of despair that would eventually lead to death as well. death. Already an orphan, both he and his brother Frank had to move to Pembroke Lodge, a residence sponsored by the Crown.

Bertrand Russell he was a prolific thinker, spending many hours a day pondering the most varied subjects imaginable. He wrote profusely on Philosophy (because from a young age he was influenced by his uncle John Stuart Mill, although they did not meet personally), about pacifism (his long life allowed him to witness the two world wars that would devastate the planet in the first half of the last century) and even Physics (because he personally knew Albert Einstein and both spoke out about the danger nuclear).

All these interests arose from his earliest childhood, in the unbearable solitude of Pembroke Lodge. There he would consume time between books, browsing that exuberant nature that characterized the gardens of the place.

The first intellectual passion of his life would be Euclidean geometry., which he was able to learn through the help of his brother and which gave him the attractive opportunity to prove theorems for himself. However, he would end up feeling disillusioned by the axioms that were required to advance in the matter, since he never supported the unquestionability.

And it is that Bertrand Russell he was characterized by rebelling against any attempt to impose that could exist in the development of knowledge; whether it was about Politics, Philosophy, Science, Mathematics or any other. For this reason he learned from many different sources, trying to overcome the limits that others tried to impose on knowledge. As a result, while still a child he wrote a compendium of notes (making use of the alphabet Greek) about the determinism that he observed in the laws of Physics, which came to torment him in highest grade.

Perhaps what made Bertrand Russell an immensely popular reference was his Principia Mathematica, which marked a before and after in logical thought, and which continues to be at the present time an essential work in this ambit. It is an encyclopedic creation written in close collaboration with the English mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, one of the most important figures in the academic life of the author in question.

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Academic training

In his youth, armed with a rabid and insatiable curiosity, Bertrand Russell began his studies at the Trinity College in the city of Cambridge (in the east of England) choosing Mathematics in a first moment. There he would meet Alfred North Whitehead, who could clearly see a quick wit that deserved particular attention. It was at this moment where His tutor suggested that he join Los Apóstoles, a group of young people dedicated to reflecting on the most varied issues, stripping them of all censorship or intellectual circumlocution.

Despite his enormous interest in Mathematics, Bertrand Russell soon discovered that the academic dynamics of Trinity College were not satisfying in in the least the hunger for knowledge of him, since they were reduced to the "simple" succession of assumptions that did not delve into the bowels of Algebra or Geometry. That was how he decided to start expanding borders, accessing the study of Philosophy (known as Moral Sciences at that time).

At this point in your life he was influenced by the thought of the idealist philosophers, a branch of knowledge that locates knowledge on a purely intellectual plane, indifferent to the direct experience of things. And it is that at that time it was the predominant current in England, extending its dominance in the country's universities (Plato, Leibniz, Hegel, etc.).

In the detailed study of Philosophy he found the ideal space to develop critical thinking about mathematics and other areas of his personal interest. In fact, he concluded his studies by writing the brilliant Essay on the Fundamentals of Geometry, showing off his idealistic stance.

A change of existential position

Although during his first steps in Philosophy he would submit to the idealism of the majority, reading Francis H. Bradley (a neo-Hegelian philosopher characterized by his vehement opposition to growing empiricism) would mean for him the inner revolution that would confront him with what until then had been his heuristics existential. All of this meant a definitive break with what was established in his mind, opening himself up to very unusual ways of thinking in his academic environment.

Specifically, he found it impossible for science and numbers to survive the conceptions of the idealistic doctrine of relations. internal, a notion that postulated that things could only be known to the extent that there was absolute understanding of their multiple relations. All this led him to write On the Nature of Judgment and to retrace the steps of what he had learned, being one of the authors who championed the historic British rebellion against idealism.

His travels outside of England, specifically to Germany (where he came to know some of the most eminent mathematicians of the day) and France (especially in the International Congress of Philosophy in Paris), represented an intellectual opening that was expressed in the intention definitive way of articulating a logical foundation for mathematics and thereby overcoming the idealism of such prominent philosophers as Immanuel Kant.

From then on he adopted the logician school of thought in his perception of mathematics., from which all hypotheses should be tested by very simple premises expressed in logical terms, an idea from the mid-s. XVII with the monads of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (which he adapted to the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Metaphysics, Psychology and Biology).

Logical thinking allowed Bertrand Russell to discover inconsistencies in the works of many authors of his time, as for example in Georg Cantor's Theory of Sets, through what is known today as Russell's Paradox. Due to the fact that the understanding of him is complex, it has often been transmitted with more accessible metaphors to the majority of people, being the best known of all of them that of the Barber.

Specifically, this paradox tells the story of a non-existent country in which a kind of King prohibits barbers from shaving men. anyone who can do it themselves, because there is a shortage of these professionals and they must dedicate themselves only to the people in need. Nevertheless, there would exist in this country a tiny town in which there would only be a barber, who would complain that he cannot shave himself (because he is capable of it) nor does he have another colleague nearby who can do it for him (since even if he had, he would be prohibited from touching his face).

Mathematics Principle

Within the prolific work of Bertrand Russell (it is said that he wrote around 3,000 words a day), the Mathematics Principle it is undoubtedly the key piece of his contributions. Is about a work of shared authorship, in which both Russell and Whitehead poured their efforts, since both shared a similar vision on the bases of this science. Russell delved into the passages whose content was of a philosophical nature, and also into the conclusions that were derived from the various formulations.

It is a work composed of three volumes (originally there were going to be four) that deals with issues related to all kinds of mathematical prisms, and which is considered the fundamental reference of logic in this field, along with Aristotle's Organon itself (from which he based the syllogism as a tool to reach logical reasoning about the validity of any argument). Currently, both are basic in any self-respecting scientific library.

Other contributions by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell, despite being a fervent pacifist in the First World War, positioned himself in favor of warmongering against the Nazis in the Second. This is because he could not assume the existence of a world in which National Socialist ideals prevailed. He was imprisoned twice during his lifetime, as a result of his anti-war actions. (advise young people on how to avoid the call to combat, for example). On the last occasion that he was detained, he was almost 90 years old.

The exquisiteness with which he wrote his ideas earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, despite having dedicated his life to the universe of numbers (to a greater extent than to that of letters). It is said that the value of his reflections somehow facilitated that the world will not be plunged into the nuclear holocaust, for he was convinced that avoiding this danger was the goal of every thinker who would have had to live that time.

Bertrand Russell died at the age of 98, leaving behind a very long and productive life, bequeathing countless works for posterity. He passed away peacefully, by the hand of Edith Finch, his last wife (he married four times during his life). He remains today an inescapable example of the search for truth., of intellectual nonconformity and the fight for peace.

Bibliographic references:

• Pellicer, M. L. (2010). Bertrand Russell: Centenary of Principles of Mathematics. Magazine of the Royal Academy of Exact Sciences, Physics and Nature, 104(2), 415 - 425.
• Perez-Jara, J. (2014). Bertrand Russell's Philosophy. Pentalfa Editions: Oviedo (Spain).