Russell's Positive Spirit And Practical Supremacy Of The Receive Mode

Opposing the mysticism that is on the opposite side of scientific spirit and the metaphysics built up on the traditional logic, Russell holds that all the knowledge of the world comes from "sense data", and the process of getting scientific knowledge is a step-by-step process, philosophical research is just the same as scientific research — philosophical theories should be built up on the real understanding of world instead of granted ideas.During the period that Russell stayed in the China, that was from October 1920 to July 1921, the situation of Chinese academic circle was: Firstly, Chinese scholars took science neither as a spirit of "pursuing truth" nor as an optimistic attitude towards life. As a result, they could hardly share a common sense with Russell. Secondly, at that time, there was a good environment for constructing metaphysics in China, not only because of the intrinsic restriction of the tradition of Chinese ancient metaphysics , but also because that under the influence of western traditional philosophy, some scholars were hankering after constructing Chinese metaphysics . Therefore, the spirit of positivism and traditional empiricism existing in Russell's though could not be accepted by Chinese academic circleo But the most decisive reason might be the utilitarian tendency existing in the way with which Chinese people handle things. The tendency probably influenced the academic research.In this dissertation, I'll analyze Russell's philosophy in the context of Chinese scientific and philosophical environment in 1920 and 1921, hoping that we can not only understand our culture better but also find out the rules which Chinese though and academic research followed during the period of May 4th.