BRACERS Record Detail for 55807
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Re Ecclesiastes, Ionians, Pythagoras. BR would let the writer read the unpublished History if he is ever in Cambridge. On the "external circumstances" mentioned in Schilpp, and mathematical logic.
BR TO UNKNOWN, 8 DEC. 1944
BRACERS 55807. ALS(X). Smith College, Mass.
Proofread by K. Blackwell
Trinity College,
Cambridge.
8.12.44.
Dear Sir
Thank you for your letter of Nov. 20. I am much interested in what you tell me about Ecclesiastes. I should very much like to see the typescript you speak of; I like to see atheists rescued from pious frauds.
Unfortunately I have no spare copy of my forthcoming history of philosophy.1 The only thing I could do would be to let you read it here, if you were ever in Cambridge; I cannot part with it, as I need it for lectures. I should much like to know your work on the connection of the Ionians with oriental sources. And how about Pythagoras?
The “external circumstances” mentioned on p. 741 of Schilpp’s volume are merely the need to earn a living, which can’t be done by mathematical logic.2
Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell.
- 1
my forthcoming history of philosophy In his History Russell showed an interest in the text of Ecclesiastes: “Until recently, this book was only known in a Greek version.… But a Hebrew manuscript has lately been discovered, in some respects different from the Greek text translated in our version of the Apocrypha” (1945 ed., p. 314; 1946 ed., pp. 334–4; 1961 ed., p. 316). Russell’s passage reads like an insertion. Unfortunately the unknown writer’s letter of 20 Nov. is not in Russell’s archives, and it is not known whether he saw the typescript mentioned.
- 2
mathematical logic This is the reason Russell gave in his “Reply to Criticisms” for not “form[ing] a critical estimate” of Gödel’s (late-arriving) paper on him (Collected Papers, 11: 63–4).
