Bertrand Russell
Logician, philosopher and public troublemaker; Nobel Prize in Literature, 1950.
Ideas
- Logic under mathematics
- With Whitehead, Principia Mathematica tried to derive mathematics from pure logic, and found Russell's paradox along the way.
- Russell's teapot
- If I claim a teapot orbits the Sun, too small to see, it is on me to prove it, not on you to disprove it.
- Clear thinking in public
- He wrote plainly for general readers about religion, marriage, education and happiness.
- Against war
- He was jailed for opposing the First World War and co-wrote the Russell–Einstein Manifesto against nuclear weapons.
In their words
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
Start with
- Principia Mathematica (1910–13)
- The Problems of Philosophy (1912)
- Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
- The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
- A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
