Tradition

Logical atomism

Overview

Logical atomism is a philosophical view that originated in the early 20th century with the development of analytic philosophy. It holds that the world consists of ultimate logical "facts" (or "atoms") that cannot be broken down any further, each of which can be understood independently of other facts.

Its principal exponent was the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. It is also widely held that the early works of his Austrian-born pupil and colleague, Ludwig Wittgenstein, defend a version of logical atomism, though he went on to reject it in his later Philosophical Investigations. Some philosophers in the Vienna Circle were also influenced by logical atomism (particularly Rudolf Carnap, who was deeply sympathetic to some of its philosophical aims, especially in his earlier works). Gustav Bergmann developed a form of logical atomism that focused on an ideal phenomenalistic language, particularly in his discussions of J. O. Urmson's work on analysis.

The name for this kind of theory was coined in March 1911 by Russell, in a work published in French titled "Le Réalisme analytique" (published in translation as "Analytic Realism" in Volume 6 of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell). Russell was developing and responding to what he called "logical holism"—i.e., the belief that the world operates in such a way that no part can be known without the whole being known first. This belief is related to monism, and is associated with the absolute idealism which was dominant in Britain at the time. The criticism of monism seen in the works of Russell and his colleague G. E. Moore can therefore be seen as an extension of their criticism of absolute idealism, particularly as it appeared in the works of F. H. Bradley and J. M. E. McTaggart. Logical atomism can thus be understood as a developed alternative to logical holism, or the "monistic logic" of the absolute idealists.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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The logical basis of the theory alone belongs to philosophy, and alone will occupy us to-night. The way the problem of continuity enters into philosophy is, broadly speaking, the following: Space and time are treated by mathematicians as consisting of points and instants, but they also have a property, easier to feel than to define, which is called continuity, and is thought by many philosophers to be destroyed when…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
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Hence either there can be only one thing in the universe, or, if there are many things, they cannot possibly interact in any way, since any interaction would be a relation, and relations are impossible. The first of these views, advocated by Spinoza and held in our own day by Bradley and many other philosophers, is called _monism_; the second, advocated by Leibniz but not very common nowadays, is called _monadism_…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
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In spite of my admiration of Mr. Russell's analytic powers, I wish, after reading such an article, that pragmatism, even had it no other function, might result in making him and other similarly gifted men ashamed of having used such powers in such abstraction from reality. Pragmatism saves us at any rate from such diseased abstractionism as those pages show.
William James, The Meaning of Truth
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Philosophers who discussed Logical atomism

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