The general view of Russell's work amongst philosophers has been that repeat edly, during his long and distinguished career, crucial changes of mind on fun damental points were significant enough to cause him to successively adopt a diversity of radically new philosophical positions. Thus Russell is seen to have embraced and then abandoned, amongst others, neo-Hegelianism, Platonic re alism, phenomenalism and logical atomism, before settling finally on a form of neutral monism that philosophers have generally found to be incredible. This view of Russell is captured in C. D. Broad's famous remark that "Mr. Russell pro duces a different system of philosophy every few years . . . " (Muirhead, 1924: 79). Reflecting this picture of Russell continually changing his position, books and papers on Russell's philosophy have typically belonged to one of two kinds. Either they have concentrated on particular periods of his thought that are taken to be especially significant, or, accepting the view of his successive conversion to dis tinctly different philosophical positions, they have provided some account of each of these supposedly disconnected periods of his thought. While much good work has been done on Russell's philosophy, this framework has had its limitations, the main one being that it conceals the basic continuity behind his thought.

When future generations come to analyze and survey twentieth-century philosophy as a whole, Bertrand Russell’s logic and theory of knowledge is assured a place of prime importance. Yet until this book was first published in 1969 no comprehensive treatment of his epistemology had appeared. Commentators on twentieth-century philosophy at the time assumed that Russell’s important contributions to the theory of knowledge were made before 1921. This book challenges that assumption and draws attention to features of Russell’s later work which were overlooked. The analysis starts with Russell’s earliest views and moves from book to book and article to article through his enormous span of writing on the problems and theory of knowledge. The changes in ideas as he developed the theory are traced, and the study culminates in a statement of his latest views. His work is seen in a continuity in which the changes were part of the development of his mature thought, and the total evaluation and interpretation clarify many of the common misunderstandings of his philosophy. This is naturally of interest to all philosophers, and for students this is the answer to inevitable questions on the nature of Russell’s ideas and their evolution.

Mathematics in and behind Russell's logicism, and its reception / I. Grattan-Guinness -- Russell's philosophical background / Nicholas Griffin -- Russell and Moore, 1898-1905 / Richard L. Cartwright -- Russell and Frege / Michael Beaney -- Bertrand Russell's logicism / Martin Godwyn and Andrew D. Irvine -- The theory of descriptions / Peter Hylton -- Russell's substitutional theory / Gregory Landini -- The theory of types / Alasdair Urquhart -- Russell's method of analysis / Paul Hager -- Russell's neutral monism / R.E. Tully -- The metaphysics of logical atomism / Bernard Linksy -- Russell's structuralism and the absolute description of the world / William Demopoulos -- From knowledge by acquaintance to knowledge by causation / Thomas Baldwin -- Russell, experience, and the roots of science / A.C. Grayling -- Bertrand Russell: moral philosopher or unphilosophical moralist? / Charles R. Pidgen.

During the course of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy developed into the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. In the last two decades, it has become increasingly influential in the rest of the world, from continental Europe to Latin America and Asia. At the same time there has been deepening interest in the origins and history of analytic philosophy, as analytic philosophers examine the foundations of their tradition and question many of the assumptions of their predecessors. This has led to greater historical self-consciousness among analytic philosophers and more scholarly work on the historical contexts in which analytic philosophy developed. This historical turn in analytic philosophy has been gathering pace since the 1990s, and the present volume is the most comprehensive collection of essays to date on the history of analytic philosophy. It contains state-of-the-art contributions from many of the leading scholars in the field, all of the contributions specially commissioned. The introductory essays discuss the nature and historiography of analytic philosophy, accompanied by a detailed chronology and bibliography. Part One elucidates the origins of analytic philosophy, with special emphasis on the work of Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein. Part Two explains the development of analytic philosophy, from Oxford realism and logical positivism to the most recent work in analytic philosophy, and includes essays on ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy as well as on the areas usually seen as central to analytic philosophy, such as philosophy of language and mind. Part Three explores certain key themes in the history of analytic philosophy.

This book examines the many faces of philosophy of time, including the metaphysical aspects, natural science issues, and the consciousness of time. It brings together the different methodologies of investigating the philosophy of time. It does so to counter the growing fragmentation of the field with regard to discussions, and the existing cleavage between analytic and continental traditions in philosophy. The book’s multidirectional approach to the notion of time contributes to a better understanding of time's metaphysical, physical and phenomenological aspects. It helps clarify the presuppositions underpinning the analytic and continental traditions in the philosophy of time and offers ways in which the differences between them can be bridged.