Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies

Russell's scientific mysticism by Stephen Nathanson WHATWAS THE relation of mysticism and religion to Russell's philosophy? Most people, no doubt, would answ:er "none at all!" Or, if they acknowledged any relation, it would be entirely negative. That is, they might point out that Russell rejected mysticism and all other forms of religion and expended a great deal of effort attacking them. Russell the sceptic attacked religious dogma. Russell the social reformer attacked religious institutions for their social conservatism. Russell the rationalist attacked the idea that mystical insight was the route to knowledge. The standard view-that religion had no substantial positive impact on Russell's thought-has been clearly stated by A. J. Ayer. "Russell," he writes, was never a theist or ... a friend of organized religion, but he was a man of religious temper. In his youth, his attitude to mathematics was almost mystical , he was always sensitive to nature and to romantic poetry, and his desire that human existence should have a meaning was reflected in the emotional stresses of his private life and in the passion which he brought to politics. At the same time, this mystical strain was balanced by a strong sense ofirony, and by a skeptical and analytical intelligence; and it makes liule showing in his philosophy.' Ayer does not deny that Russell had a "religious temper". Nor does he deny that Russell's life and activities were influenced by this temper. I Bertrand Russell (New York: Viking Press, 1972), p. 8; my italics. 14 Russell's scientific mysticism 15 However, he does deny that religiousideas or attitudes had any effect on Russell's overall philosophy. This is all very plausible and accords with many of Russell's own descriptions of himself. In a 1959 interview, he spoke of religious interests as ,a feature of his adolescence and noted that his loss of religious beliefaffected him very little.2 Two years earlier, in the preface to Why I Am Not A Christian, Russell seemed to summarize his entire view of religion when he wrote: "I think all the great religions of the world ... both untrue and harmful."3 In spite ofits widespread acceptance and its apparent endorsement by Russell himself, this interpretation of Russell's thought has been called into question by Ronald Jager. In the concluding chapter of his book, The Development of Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, Jager states: In religion, despite the widespread impression that its relation to Russell's general philosophy is entirely external, I shall suggest that the opposite is true, that religion is far more delicately interwoven with the rest of his philosophy than appears on the surface.4 This remark must strike most readers as bizarre, for there seems to be no positive place for religion in Russell's thinking. Certainly, Russell's book, Religion and Science (1935), poses a strong opposition between the religious. and scientific and comes down strQngly on the side of the post-Copernican, post-Darwinian world-view, rejecting the anthropocentric theism of traditional Christianity. Moreover, though the tone is less strident, Russell had rejected the quasi-religious belief in mystical unities in his 1914 essay, "Mysticism and Logic", supporting in its stead metaphysical pluralism and the belief in the reality of the spatio-temporal world which science describes. Likewise, in that same essay, Russell dismissed claims about the validity of mystical insights, proclaiming rational thought as the arbiter of truth. What sort of religious doctrine, then, might have played a positive role in Russell's thought? Before approaching jager's specific thesis, it is worth noting that there are passages in Russell's works which suggest that Russell wanted to avoid a wholesale rejection of the mystical and the religious, that his aim was to retain some component of these traditions along side his commitZ Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (New York: Avon Books, 1960), p. 19. 3 New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957, p. v. 4 London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972, p. 462. 16 Russell summer 1985 ment to science and scientific philosophizing. Consider the opening words of "Mysticism and Logic": Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been...