Footnote kr76

kr76. In 1914, Russell quoted with approval James on pluralism:

As regards our present question, namely, the question of the unity of the world, the right method, as I think, has been indicated by William James.[2] "Let us now turn our backs upon ineffable or unintelligible ways of accounting for the world's oneness, and inquire whether, instead of being a principle, the 'oneness' affirmed may not merely be a name like 'substance' descriptive of the fact that certain specific and verifiable connections are found among the parts of the experiential flux. . . . We can easily conceive of things that shall have no connection whatever with each other. We may assume them to inhabit different times and spaces, as the dreams of different persons do even now. They may be so unlike and incommensurable, and so inert towards one another, as never to jostle or interfere. Even now there may actually be whole universes so disparate from ours that we who know ours have no means of perceiving that they exist. We conceive their diversity, however; and by that fact the whole lot of them form what is known in logic as a 'universe of discourse.' To form a universe of discourse argues, as this example shows, no further kind of connexion. The importance attached by certain monistic writers to the fact that any chaos may become a universe by merely being named, is to me incomprehensible."

+++++++

In the first place a philosophical proposition must be general. It must not deal specially with things on the surface of the earth, or with the solar system, or with any other portion of space and time. It is this need of generality which has led to the belief that philosophy deals with the universe as a whole. I do not believe that this belief is justified, but I do believe that a philosophical proposition must be applicable to everything that exists or may exist. It might be supposed that this admission would be scarcely distinguishable from the view which I wish to reject. This, however, would be an error, and an important one. The traditional view would make the universe itself the subject of various predicates which could not be applied to any particular thing in the universe, and the ascription of such peculiar predicates to the universe would be the special business of philosophy. I maintain, on the contrary, that there are no propositions of which the "universe" is the subject; in other words, that there is no such thing as the "universe." What I do maintain is that there are general propositions which may be asserted of each individual thing, such as the propositions of logic. This does not involve that all the things there are form a whole which could be regarded as another thing and be made the subject of predicates. It involves only the assertion that there are properties which belong to each separate thing, not that there are properties belonging to the whole of things collectively. The philosophy which I wish to advocate may be called logical atomism or absolute pluralism, because, while maintaining that there are many things, it denies that there is a whole composed of those things. We shall see, therefore, that philosophical propositions, instead of being concerned with the whole of things collectively, are concerned with all things distributively; and not only must they be concerned with all things, but they must be concerned with such properties of all things as do not depend upon the accidental nature of the things that there happen to be, but are true of any possible world, independently of such facts as can only be discovered by our senses.

"On Scientific Method in Philosophy"
The Herbert Spencer Lecture, Oxford 1914,
recorded in Mysticism and Logic (Allen and Unwin 1918)

---

2. Some problems of philosophy : a beginning of an introduction to philosophy by William James (Longmans, Green 1911).

---

Russell agreed that a mere collection does not imply a unity and thought that the Copernican revolution had overthrown monism and anthrocentrism. But, Einstein's general theory of relativity was to soon cause Russell difficulties.

Some years before Russell, Johann Eduard Erdmann discussed the issue of monism among the early Greek thinkers:

According to Plato, the Eleatics, whose doctrine was perhaps older than Xenophanes, called that which we call the universe, the One. But since all their proofs of unity consist in polemics against Becoming, it is evident that the One is their name for unchanging Being, which also agrees with the assertion of Theophrastus, that they conceived Being as one. This name justifies the inference as to Pythagorean influences, even if the tradition that Xenophanes was instructed by the Pythagorean Telauges, should be false. It is a polemical contradiction of the Pythagorean doctrine, when Xenophanes asserts that the One does not breathe... The above Platonic testimony is completed by that of Aristotle, who says that Xenophanes, contemplating the whole universe, had said this One was God. Since Time contains multiplicity, the alone existent One, or the Deity, is eternal. Together with plurality, the indefiniteness (the apeiron) of the One is denied, and Aristotle's censure that it remained a moot point whether Xenophanes conceived his principle as peperasmenon, is undeserved. The spherical figure which Xenophanes is said to have ascribed to the Deity, is intelligible in one to whom the universe displays the Deity, and a consequence of the denial of every multiplicity of functions, and hence also ol organs. " A whole it sees, a whole it hears." Where all plurality is excluded there can be no question of Polytheism, nor, where no Becoming is assumed, of a Theogony : hence his scorn of the popular religion, his hatred of Homer, etc.

J.E. Erdmann
Williston S. Hough, translation editor
A History of Philosophy (Allen and Unwin; Macmillan 1890)
(Erdmann's first volume appeared in German in 1860)

 

Clearly, Russell and Xenophanes have a difference of opinion.