ICARUS, or The Future of Science

New York, N.Y.: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1924. Third Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Fair. Format is approximately 4.5 inches by 6.5 inches. 64 pages. Cover has some wear and soiling. Corners and edges have some rubbing. Some page marks. Includes Introduction, and chapters on The Effects of the Physical Sciences, The Increase of Organization, The Anthropological Sciences, and Conclusion. Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May 1872 - 2 February 1970) was a British polymath and writer. He was born into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. He worked in philosophy, mathematics, and logic. His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics. Russell was a public intellectual, historian, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. Throughout his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, although he later wrote he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense". Russell is one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and one of the founders of analytic philosophy. Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce all of mathematics to logic. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." Lord Russell wrote in his Introduction: I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups, rather than to make men happy. Icarus, having been taught to fly by his father Daedalus, was destroyed by his rashness. I fear that the same fate may overtake the populations whom modern men of science have taught to fly. Some of the dangers inherent in the progress of science while we retain our present political and economic institutions are set forth in the following pages. This was a timely warning during a period of significant technology achievement and change, a significant portion of which had been accelerated by the research and development activities undertaken during the recent World War. At the conclusion of this thoughtful, insightful, and challenging essay, Lord Russell states "Science has not given men more self-control, more kindliness, or more power of discounting their passions in deciding upon a course of action. It has given communities more poser to indulge their collective passions, but, by making society more organic, it has diminished the part played by private passions. Men's collective passions are mainly evil; far the strongest of them are hatred and rivalry toward other groups. Therefore at present all that gives men more poser to indulge their collective passions is bad. that is why science threatens to cause the destruction of our civilization. The only solid hope seems to lie in the possibility of world-wide domination by one group, say the United States, leading to the gradual formation of an orderly economic and political world-government."