Icarus or The Future of Science

by Bertrand Russell

Publisher:

Dancing Unicorn Books

, 2023

Overview

Mr. Haldane’s Daedalus has set forth an attractive picture of the future as it may become through the use of scientific discoveries to promote human happiness. Much as I should like to agree with his forecast, a long experience of statesmen and governments has made me somewhat sceptical.

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.

Product Details

• Title: Icarus or The Future of Science
• Author: Bertrand Russell
• Publisher: Dancing Unicorn Books
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Pages: 11
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781515452676, 1515452670
• Resource ID: LLS:9781515452676
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T18:07:22Z

About Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social reformer, and pacifist. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died. Russell led the British “revolt against Idealism” in the early twentieth century and is one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his protégé Wittgenstein and his elder Frege. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay “On Denoting” has been considered a “paradigm of philosophy.” Both works have had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics and analytic philosophy. He was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I, campaigned against Adolf Hitler, for nuclear disarmament. He criticized Soviet totalitarianism and the United States of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. 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.”