Table Of ContentThe Analysis of Matter
‘The whole book is candid and stimulating and, for both its subject and its
treatment, one of the best that Mr. Russell has given us.’
The Times
The Analysis of Matter is the product of thirty years of thinking by one of the
twentieth century’s best-known philosophers. An inquiry into the philosoph-
ical foundations of physics, it was written against the background of stunning
new developments in physics earlier in the century, above all relativity, as well
as the excitement around quantum theory, which was just being developed.
Concerned to place physics on a stable footing at a time of great theoretical
change, Russell argues that the concept of matter itself can be replaced by
a logical construction whose basic foundations are events. He is careful to
point out that this does not prove that matter does not exist, but it does show
that physicists can get on with their work without assuming that matter does
exist. Russell argues that fundamental bits of “matter”, such as electrons and
protons, are simply groups of events connected in a certain way and their
properties are all that are required for physics.
This Routledge Classics edition includes the 1992 Introduction by John G.
Slater.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) is regarded as one of the great-
est philosophers of the twentieth century and a celebrated
writer and commentator on social and political afairs.
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Bertrand
Russell
The Analysis of Matter
With the 1992 Introduction by John G. Slater
London and New York
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First published in Routledge Classics 2023
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© 2023 Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd
Introduction © 1992, 2022 John G. Slater
The right of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd to be identified
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First published 1927 by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.
Reprinted 1992 by Routledge
Reprinted 2007 by Spokesman
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-31268-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-31228-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30889-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003308898
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Contents
INTRODUCTION TO THE ROUTLEDGE CLASSICS EDITION IX
PREFACE XV
1 The Nature of the Problem 1
PART 1: THE LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PHYSICS 11
2 Pre-Relativity Physics 13
3 Electrons and Protons 23
4 The Theory of Quanta 29
5 The Special Theory of Relativity 46
6 The General Theory of Relativity 53
7 The Method of Tensors 61
8 Geodesics 70
9 Invariants and Their Physical Interpretation 81
10 Weyl’s Theory 91
11 The Principle of Diferential Laws 97
viii CONTENTS
12 Measurement 105
13 Matter and Space 116
14 The Abstractness of Physics 125
PART 2: PHYSICS AND PERCEPTION 133
15 From Primitive Perception to Common Sense 135
16 From Common Sense to Physics 149
17 What is an Empirical Science 161
18 Our Knowledge of Particular Matters of Fact 169
19 Data, Inferences, Hypotheses, and Theories 177
20 The Causal Theory of Perception 185
21 Perception and Objectivity 203
22 The Belief in General Laws 213
23 Substance 221
24 Importance of Structure in Scientifc Inference 231
25 Perception From the Standpoint of Physics 238
26 Non-Mental Analogues to Perception 245
PART 3: THE STRUCTURE OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD 251
27 Particulars and Events 253
28 The Construction of Points 266
29 Space-Time Order 279
30 Causal Lines 289
31 Extrinsic Causal Laws 299
32 Physical and Perceptual Space-Time 307
33 Periodicity and Qualitative Series 316
34 Types of Physical Occurrences 327
35 Causality and Interval 338
36 The Genesis of Space-Time 347
37 Physics and Neutral Monism 353
38 Summary and Conclusion 364
INDEX 373
Introduction
The Analysis of Matter is the product of thirty years of thinking. When
Russell fnished his second book, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry
(1897), he turned his attention to the problem of the philosophical
foundations of physics, which he usually referred to as “the problem
of matter” or “matter” for short. At that time he had not yet freed him-
self from the neo-Hegelianism he had been taught at Cambridge, so
his frst efforts were squeezed into that philosophical position. When
he published a sample of them in My Philosophical Development (1959), he
judged them harshly: “On re-reading what I wrote about the philos-
ophy of physics in the years 1896 to 1898, it seems to me complete
nonsense, and I fnd it hard to imagine how I can ever have thought
otherwise.” But not all of his thinking on the problem of matter was
crippled by his philosophical position, for he was a trained mathem-
atician and had read widely in scientifc textbooks. Examining the
problem from the point of view of a scientist he concluded that he
could make no progress on the problem of matter until mathematics
had a frm foundation, so he resolved to solve that set of problems
frst, confdent that it would take him only a very few years. In 1903 he
offered the public a preliminary account in The Principles of Mathematics,
