Human Knowledge

Abstract

LORD RUSSELL interprets human knowledge narrowly.He deals with scientific knowledge and takes it to be, for the most part, mathematics physics, along with the cruder common-sense knowledge on which they are based. He admits, indeed emphasizes, that psychology is in some respects a distinct discipline, which has to be taken into account and has a certain primacy. Granted these limitations, which are certainly convenient for exposition, the book is a masterly and comprehensive piece of work. It contains, in the reviewer's opinion, far the best treatment that has yet appeared of the problems of inductive generalization. This is the central theme of the book and one on which Lord Russell has barely touched in previous books. There is a discussion of language (Part 2) intended to clear up ambiguities and dispose of fallacies, not very different from that in his "Inquiry into Meaning and Truth". There is a valuable section on probability (Part 5) which is intended to specify the useful but subordinate part which the mathematical theory of probability plays ; subordinate, because mathematical theory cannot be applied unless the basic problem of induction is taken as solved already, and because another non-mathematical notion of 'credibility' is required.

Human Knowledge

Its Scope and Limits. By Bertrand Russell. Pp. 538. (London : George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1948.) 18s. net.