剑桥大学三一学院，菁英荟萃，而怀特海、罗素、维特根斯坦出于其类，拔乎其萃。三人皆天纵之才，师承有来，或自得师。

 

l  怀特海（Alfred North Whitehead  1861–1947）

 

怀特海学识淹博，贯通哲学、科学及宗教。1925年初，怀氏赴哈佛大学“罗威尔讲座”（Lowell Lectures）演讲，讲稿经修订、增删后出版，名为《科学与现代世界》（Science & the Modern World），纵论机体论、价值观、上帝观，标志怀氏哲学蟺变。杜威（John Dewey）赞：“自笛卡尔《方法论》以来，探索科学与哲学关系之力作。”

 

怀氏擅于将哲理融入语境，探讨无止境，其表述缜密、艰深，有时深不可测。

 

近代科学兴起，情况迥然，有别于宗教改革。后者引发民众叛离，百五十年间，将欧陆浸于血泊。而科学运动发轫，则仅限少数智识精英。

 

十六世纪，科学之所以有别于欧洲诸多潮流，也因其普适性。现代科学诞生于欧洲，然属于整个世界。近两个世纪，西方范式影响亚洲文明，东方贤哲百思莫解。显然，西方对东方影响最大者，乃科学与科学观念，因为，科学传播可跨越国境与种族。

 

The Origins of Modern Science

 

The progress of civilization is not wholly a uniform drift towards better things. It may perhaps wear this aspect, if we map it on a scale which is large enough. But such broad views obscure the details on which rests our whole understanding of the process. New epochs emerge with comparative suddenness, in regard to the scores of thousands of years throughout which complete history extends. Secluded races suddenly take their places in the main stream of events: technological discoveries transform the mechanism of human life: a primitive art quickly flowers into full satisfaction of some aesthetic cravings: great religions in their crusading youth spread through the nations as the peace of Heaven and the sword of the Lord.

  

The sixteenth century of our era saw the disruption of Western Christianity and the rise of modern science. It was an age of ferment. Nothing was settled, though much was opened -- new worlds and new ideas. In science, Copernicus and Besalius may be chosen as representative figures: they typify the new cosmology and this scientific emphasis on direct observation. Giordano Bruno was the martyr; though the cause for which he suffered was not that of science, but that of free imaginative speculation. His death in the year 1600 ushered in the first century of modern science in the strict sense of the term. In his execution there was an unconscious symbolism: for the subsequent tone of scientific thought has contained distrust of his type of general speculativeness. The Reformation, for all its importance, may be considered as a domestic affair of the European races. Even the Christianity of the East viewed it with profound disengagement. Furthermore, such disruptions are no new phenomena in the history of Christianity or of other religions. When we project this great revolution upon the whole history of the Christian Church, we cannot look upon it as introducing a new principle into human life. For good or for evil, it was a great transformation of religion; but it was not the coming of religion. It did not itself claim to be so. Reformers maintained that they were only restoring what had been forgotten.

  

It is quite otherwise with the rise of modern science. In every way it contrasts with the contemporary religious movement. The Reformation was a popular uprising, and for a century and a half drenched Europe in blood. The beginnings of the scientific movement were confined to a minority among the intellectual elite. In a generation which saw the Thirty Year's War and remembered Alva in the Netherlands, the worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed. The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir.

 

The quiet growth of science has practically recolored our mentality so that modes of thought which in former times were exceptional are now broadly spread through the educated world. This new coloring of the ways of thought had been proceeding slowly for many ages in the European peoples. At last it issued in the rapid development of science; and has thereby strengthened itself by its most obvious application. The new mentality is more important even than the new science and the new technology. It has altered the metaphysical presuppositions and the imaginative contents of our minds; so that now the old stimuli provoke a new response. This is exactly illustrated by a sentence from a published letter of William James. When he was finishing his great treatise on the "Principles of Psychology". he wrote to his brother Henry James `I have to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts.'

  

This new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in `irreducible and stubborn facts': all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principle. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalization which forms the novelty in our present society. Previously it had appeared sporadically and as if by chance. This balance of mind has now become part of the tradition which infects cultivated thought. It the salt which keeps life sweet. The main business of universities is to transmit this tradition as a widespread inheritance from generation to generation.

  

Another contrast which singles out science from among the European movements of the sixteenth century is its universality. Modern science was born in Europe, but its home is the whole world. In the last two centuries there has been a long and confused impact of western modes upon the civilization of Asia. The wise men of the East have been puzzling and puzzling, as to what may be the regulative secret of life which can be passed from West to East without the wanton destruction on their own inheritance which they so rightly prize. More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, where ever there is a rational society.

 

《教育之目的》（The Aims of Education）初版于1929年，怀氏认为，大学旨在熔铸智识与热望，少长咸集，创意求知。大学传授讯息，然以极具想象之方式传授。至少大学应为社会发挥此项功能，舍此便枉为大学。

 

Fortunately, the specialist side of education presents an easier problem than does the provision of a general culture. For this there are many reasons. One is that many of the principles of procedure to be observed are the same in both cases, and it is unnecessary to recapitulate. Another reason is that specialist training takes place—or should take place—at a more advanced stage of the pupil’s course, and thus there is easier material to work upon. But undoubtedly the chief reason is that the specialist study is normally a study of peculiar interest to the student. He is studying it because, for some reason, he wants to know it. This makes all the difference. The general culture is designed to foster an activity of mind; the specialist course utilises this activity. But it does not do to lay too much stress on these neat antitheses. As we have already seen, in the general course foci of special interest will arise; and similarly in the special study, the external connections of the subject drag thought outwards.

 

Again, there is not one course of study which merely gives general cultures and another which gives special knowledge. The subjects pursued for the sake of a general education are special subjects specially studied; and, on the other hand, one of the ways of encouraging general mental activity is to foster a special devotion. You may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it.

 

The appreciation of the structure of ideas is that side of a cultured mind which can only grow under the influence of a special study. I mean that eye for the whole chess-board, for the bearing of one set of ideas on another. Nothing but a special study can give any appreciation for the exact formulation of general ideas, for their relations when formulated, for their service in the comprehension of life. A mind so disciplined should be both more abstract and more concrete. It has been trained in the comprehension of abstract thought and in the analysis of facts.

 

Finally, there should grow the most austere of all mental qualities; I mean the sense for style. It is an aesthetic sense, based on admiration for the direct attainment of a foreseen end, simply and without waste. Style in art, style in literature, style in science, style in logic, style in practical execution have fundamentally the same aesthetic qualities, namely, attainment and restraint. The love of a subject in itself and for itself, where it is not the sleepy pleasure of pacing a mental quarter-deck, is the love of style as manifested in that study.

 

Here we are brought back to the position from which we started, the utility of education. Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being. The administrator with a sense for style hates waste; the engineer with a sense for style economises his material; the artisan with a sense for style prefers good work. Style is the ultimate morality of mind.

 

But above style, and above knowledge, there is something, a vague shape like fate above the Greek gods. That something is Power. Style is the fashioning of power, the restraining of power. But, after all, the power of attainment of the desired end is fundamental. The first thing is to get there. Do not bother about your style, but solve your problem, justify the ways of God to man, administer your province, or do whatever else is set before you.

 

Where, then, does style help? In this, with style the end is attained without side issues, without raising undesirable inflammations. With style you attain your end and nothing but your end. With style the effect of your activity is calculable, and foresight is the last gift of gods to men. With style your power is increased, for your mind is not distracted with irrelevancies, and you are more likely to attain your object. Now style is the exclusive privilege of the expert. Whoever heard of the style of an amateur painter, of the style of an amateur poet? Style is always the product of specialist study, the peculiar contribution of specialism to culture.

 

l  罗素（Bertrand Arthur William Russell  1872 -- 1970）

 

罗素出身贵胄，却有向学之心，终成宏深而通识之人。罗素原本数学，旁涉哲学、逻辑、历史、文学，1950年获诺贝尔文学奖。

 

1910-13年间，罗素与导师怀特海合著《数学原理》（Principia Mathematica），将类型论（theory of types）及创意引入逻辑学，淹博且糅杂，即便哲学家或数学家，亦少有通解这部经典者。此后，罗素与怀氏因歧见而分手。

 

罗素回忆：“约十六岁，即养成习惯，一句话反复思索，从而兼容优美、清晰和韵律。每有所想，都如此运思，尤其追求简洁。”此后，行文仿穆勒、弥尔顿，厚积薄发。《时代》盛赞“惟有罗素，能将英语运用得出神入化，解惑，且巧妙厘清庞杂思路。”这一特质体现于《西方哲学史》。

 科学权威为近世贤哲承认，因讲求理智而非统治，与教会权威决然不同。拒绝不致受到惩罚；接受不为审辩左右，全凭诉诸于理性，让人心服。此外，科学权威渐次且局部，不像天主教义，创立一统体系，包罗世间德行，人类希望，乃至宇宙过去与未来。科学或有见解，仅以科学实证为准，孤证于茫然无知。科学权威与教会权威不同，还因教会每有宣示，必言确信无疑，亘古不变；而科学判断则属推测，基于或然，可以修正。

 

Part I. From the Renaissance to Hume

 

The authority of science, which is recognized by most philosophers of the modem epoch, is a very different thing from the authority of the Church, since it is intellectual, not governmental. No penalties fall upon those who reject it; no prudential arguments influence those who accept it. It prevails solely by its intrinsic appeal to reason. It is, moreover, a piecemeal and partial authority; it does not, like the body of Catholic dogma, lay down a complete system, covering human morality, human hopes, and the past and future history of the universe. It pronounces only on whatever, at the time, appears to have been scientifically ascertained, which is a small island in an ocean of nescience. There is yet another difference from ecclesiastical authority, which declares its pronouncements to be absolutely certain and eternally unalterable: the pronouncements of science are made tentatively, on a basis of probability, and are regarded as liable to modification. This produces a temper of mind very different from that of the medieval dogmatist.

 

Chapter VI. The Rise of Science

 

ALMOST everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century. The Italian Renaissance, though not medieval, is not modern; it is more akin to the best age of Greece. The sixteenth century, with its absorption in theology, is more medieval than the world of Machiavelli. The modern world, so far as mental outlook is concerned, begins in the seventeenth century. No Italian of the Renaissance would have been unintelligible to Plato or Aristotle; Luther would have horrified Thomas Aquinas, but would not have been difficult for him to understand. With the seventeenth century it is different: Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Occam, could not have made head or tail of Newton.

  

The new conceptions that science introduced profoundly influenced modern philosophy. Descartes, who was in a sense the founder of modern philosophy, was himself one of the creators of seventeenth century science. Something must be said about the methods and results of astronomy and physics before the mental atmosphere of the time in which modern philosophy began can be understood.

  

In the remainder of this chapter I shall try to state briefly the philosophical beliefs which appeared to follow from seventeenth century science, and some of the respects in which modern science differs from that of Newton.

  

Copernicus (1473-1543) was a Polish ecclesiastic, of unimpeachable orthodoxy. In his youth he travelled in Italy, and absorbed something of the atmosphere of the Renaissance. In 1500 he had a lectureship or professorship of mathematics in Rome, but in 1503 he returned to his native land, where he was a canon of Frauenburg. Much of his time seems to have been spent in combating the Germans and reforming the currency, but his leisure was devoted to astronomy. He came early to believe that the sun is at the centre of the universe, and that the earth has a twofold motion: a diurnal rotation, and an annual revolution about the sun. Fear of ecclesiastical censure led him to delay publication of his views though he allowed them to become known. His chief work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Ccekstium, was published in the year of his death (1543), with a preface by his friend Osiander saying that the heliocentric theory was only put forward as a hypothesis. It is uncertain how far Copernicus sanctioned this statement, but the question is not very important, as he himself made similar statements in the body of the book. 1 The book is dedicated to the Pope, and escaped official Catholic condemnation until the time of Galileo. The Church in the lifetime of Copernicus was more liberal than it became after the Council of Trent, the Jesuits, and the revived Inquisition had done their work.

  

The men who founded modern science had two merits which are not necessarily found together: immense patience in observation, and great boldness in framing hypotheses. The second of these merits had belonged to the earliest Greek philosophers; the first existed, to a considerable degree, in the later astronomers of antiquity. But no one among the ancients, except perhaps Aristarchus, possessed both merits, and no one in the Middle Ages possessed either. Copernicus, like his great successors, possessed both. He knew all that could be known, with the instruments existing in his day, about the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies on the celestial sphere, and he perceived that the diurnal rotation of the earth was a more economical hypothesis than the revolution of all the celestial spheres.

  

Apart from the revolutionary effect on cosmic imagination, the great merits of the new astronomy were two: first, the recognition that what had been believed since ancient times might be false; second, that the test of scientific truth is patient collection of facts, combined with bold guessing as to laws binding the facts together. Neither merit is so fully developed in Copernicus as in his successors, but both are already present in a high degree in his work.

  

Another thing that resulted from science was a profound change in the conception of man's place in the universe. In the medieval world, the earth was the centre of the heavens, and everything had a purpose concerned with man. In the Newtonian world, the earth was a minor planet of a not specially distinguished star; astronomical distances were so vast that the earth, in comparison, was a mere pin-point. It seemed unlikely that this immense apparatus was all designed for the good of certain small creatures on this pin-point. Moreover purpose, which had since Aristotle formed an intimate part of the conception of science, was now thrust out of scientific procedure. Any one might still believe that the heavens exist to declare the glory of God, but no one could let this belief intervene in an astronomical calculation. The world might have a purpose, but purposes could no longer enter into scientific explanations.

  

The Copernican theory should have been humbling to human pride, but in fact the contrary effect was produced, for the triumphs of science revived human pride. The dying ancient world had been obsessed with a sense of sin, and had bequeathed this as an oppression to the Middle Ages. To be humble before God was both right and prudent, for God would punish pride. Pestilences, floods, earthquakes, Turks, Tartars, and comets perplexed the gloomy centuries, and it was felt that only greater and greater humility would avert these real or threatened calamities. But it became impossible to remain humble when men were achieving such triumphs: Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night. God said "Let Newton be," and all was light......

  

And as for damnation, surely the Creator of so vast a universe had something better to think about than sending men to hell for minute theological errors. Judas Iscariot might be damned, but not Newton, though he were an Arian.

  

There were of course many other reasons for self-satisfaction. The Tartars had been confined to Asia, and the Turks were ceasing to be a menace. Comets had been humbled by Halley, and as for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them. Western Europeans were growing rapidly richer, and were becoming lords of all the world: they had conquered North and South America, they were powerful in Africa and India, respected in China and feared in Japan. When to all this were added the triumphs of science, it is no wonder that the men of the seventeenth century felt themselves to be fine fellows, not the miserable sinners that they still proclaimed themselves on Sundays.

 

l  维特根斯坦（Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein  1889–1951）

 

维特根斯坦学术生涯与怀德海、罗素决然不同，一生充满传奇：出身于豪门，酷爱机械、物理、数学，经逻辑学家弗雷格（Gottlob Frege）引荐，入剑桥大学，师从罗素。一战爆发，维氏应征入伍，满怀哲学深思，奔赴东线战场。凡尔赛和谈期间，维氏从战俘营获释，《逻辑哲学论》（Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus）初稿已竣，出版于1921年。

 

《逻辑哲学论》旨在探索逻辑哲学及语言逻辑，艰涩难懂，羼杂叔本华哲学思想，甚至弗雷格与罗素都未深解。

 

晚岁，维氏厌倦教书生涯，称其“呆板、矫揉、自满”，亦对《逻辑哲学论》所述另有所思，厌弃旧说。

 

序言：

 

或许本书仅为知者所解，其已有定见，或所见略同。因此，本书并非课本，让读者理解且愉悦。

 

本书探讨哲学问题，且阐明此类问题之出现，皆因误解语言逻辑。其旨要概述如下：凡言者皆可清晰言之；凡不可言者，则应缄默。

 

本书意在为思维设限，或并非为思维，而为思维表达方式设限：若为思维设限，则应思考界线两边（以思考不可思者）。

 

由此，仅应为语言设限，而在界线另一边者毫无意义。

 

笔者无意断定，此精心之作与其他哲学家著述有何不同。诚然，详述无甚创新；无须溯本求源，因一己之思，他人或早已言之，亦无关宏旨。

 

弗雷格巨作，以及吾友伯特兰·罗素先生著作，促使笔者思想，谨此致谢。

 

设若本书还有价值，在以下两点：首先，表达思想，且思想表达愈充分，则愈具价值，愈切中肯綮。自知与潜在价值相距尚远。限于学识，实难胜任，所冀方家补益。

 

此外，本书所述思想体系，自以为无懈可击，可谓明确。自认就本质而言，问题最终解决。倘若所言不谬，则其次，本书价值在于，解决此类问题，所获甚少。

维氏虽借鉴弗雷格著述，然脱却繁琐，率直而问：何为语言？人类喧嚣，涂写，为何以及如何与世间万物关联？《逻辑哲学论》开篇曰：“世界即万象，仅此而已。”

 

《逻辑哲学论》德文初版于1921年，翌年，由C.K. Ogden (与 F. P. Ramsey) 译为英文；其后，D. F. Pears 及 B. F. McGuinness 重译英文。与德文对照，两个译文尝显差异，是否迻译维氏原意，见仁见智。

 

The seven basic propositions are:

	Ogden translation	Pears/McGuinness translation
1.	The world is everything that is the case.	The world is all that is the case.
2.	What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.	What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.
3.	The logical picture of the facts is the thought.	A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4.	The thought is the significant proposition.	A thought is a proposition with sense.
5.	Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.	A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
	(An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)	(An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)
6.	The general form of truth-function is [¯p,¯ξ,N(¯ξ)][p¯,ξ¯,N(ξ¯)].	The general form of a truth-function is [¯p,¯ξ,N(¯ξ)][p¯,ξ¯,N(ξ¯)].
	This is the general form of proposition.	This is the general form of a proposition.
7.	Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.	What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.