Emiricism and Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was an empiricist. He believed that knowledge is through our senses, it is through sense impressions. He stressed the idea that knowledge must be verifiable, to be considered as reality. He coined the phrase, “What is knowledge must be capable of being directly or indirectly verified through the senses.”

Russell felt that verifications came in two forms. One form of verification is direct verification and the other, less reliable, indirect verification. Direct-to Russell- is the act of actually seeing something and being able to know that what you are actually seeing is real. For example, if your see a dog running across the road you can verify that the dog is indeed running. Another example is when your see a thunderstorm rolling in you can verify with your eyes that the thunderstorm is prevalent. Indirect verification, on the other hand, is far less reliable. Russell divides this idea into two subsections: historical and cumulative. Historical evidence is when you check sources and documents for information, but do not actually see what happened, hence the tern indirectly verifiable. The further back in time you go the less reliable the information is, because events were sometimes exaggerated or recorded in error. Cumulative is when science can point toward something being the case. For example, at the speed of light time is supposedly zero. Scientists cannot prove this, but all evidence points toward it being the case. An example of how science build and builds in on page 21 in Russell handout, “Newton discovered the law of gravitation, which lasted without modification for over 200 years, Tiny discrepancies led Einstein to a change which was in practice very minute, through very revolutionary are regards, was not exactly right, although the errors in its prediction could only be discovered in a few cases, and then only by the utmost precision in measurement. This development may serve as a sample and model of scientific method. Hypothesis and observation alternate; each new hypothesis calls for new observations, and, if it is to be accepted, must fit the facts better that any previous hypothesis.” And finally, anecdotal evidence is when someone tells you something that happened. This is neither direct verification nor indirect verification it is not verifiable at all, like religion.

Bertrand Russell (a Nobel Prize winner in literature) did not believe in religion. He stated that religious documents are not verifiable. He claims that since religion causes so many wars and that it does more bad then good, it must be a fallacy and that we must face the facts that religion is not real, like Santa. I feel he does raise so fair points, but that does not prove anything. What we perceive as bad may actually be a good thing, we just don’t know. He also says that there is not life after death, and that there is no reason why there should be. Russell declares that there is no real evidence to prove religion, directly or indirectly. Russell explains on pages 15-16 of the handout, “The evidence for the Christian scheme of things is The Bible; the evidence for the scientific world is observation and induction. Science asks on what ground The Bible account should be accepted. Were the authors of the Pentateuch present at Creation? Obviously not. Can we believe that God revealed inquirer to know which to believe?” Russell stresses that the only reason people believe religion is fear and the religion controls people. I feel yes the may be true, but if people truly did not believe religion they would not have any fear at all. In conclusion, Russell does have a few good ideas against religion, but for me they do not prove to nonexistence of the matter.