The Cosmic Revolutionary's Handbook (Or: How to Beat the Big Bang)

This is a new book by two astronomers, Luke A. Barnes and Geraint F. Lewis, who live in Australia. I read it to update myself on the big bang theory, at least in an informal sense. Of course, the actual research in this area is quite abstruse, so books like this only give you a vague sense of what is going on. While there is an informal tone to the book, it is quite apparent that there has been an incredible amount of research, accompanied both by better telescopes and advances in physics, since Edwin Hubble first proposed the theory in 1929. One amusing aspect of the book is the continuous cautioning by the authors of how theories must be presented according to prevailing mathematical standards and provide experimental proof for their assertions; apparently this occurred because the authors wrote a book earlier and have been deluged with ideas and theories from people who have no conception of the scientific method. They were inundated with emails and letters, particularly from retired engineers, who thought that they had theories that explained everything. So the book is an attempt to provide them with some guidelines if they expect to be taken seriously.

As discussed in the book, the big bang theory is one of the great triumphs of modern science. It is still holding together, though various observations in recent years have raised questions regarding its validity. The main idea is still intact. The theory came about as new ways of measuring distance in space became possible. Cepheid variable stars were observed locally, and it was determined that their intrinsic brightness was the same no matter where they were located. Thus, a dim Cepheid is farther away than a bright Cepheid. Initially, the distance of Cepheids was measured by their parallax, using the earth's orbit to form the base of a triangle extending to a star. Hubble observed that the light from distant Cepheids was shifted toward the red end of the visual spectrum in the same way that the Doppler shift lengthens sound waves from objects that are moving away. He showed that the more distant a Cepheid star, the more its light had redshifted, indicating that it was moving away faster. This was the first indication that the universe is expanding. Later on, with the discovery of Type 1a supernovae in 1993, the measurements from objects at even greater distances became possible. The distance of nearby Type 1a supernovae can be determined when they occupy the same galaxy as a Cepheid variable, and this provides a distance scale for Type 1a supernovae that are well beyond any visible Cepheid variables. These supernovae have a predictable intrinsic brightness, which can be determined by the time it takes for the light to fade after the explosion. As it turned out, the more distant a Type 1a supernova, the more its light is redshifted, confirming Hubble's theory.

Most of the book discusses various findings that have occurred since Hubble and whether they are compatible with the expanding universe hypothesis. In the1980's, Alan Guth proposed the inflation theory in order to explain why we can't detect magnetic monopoles, as would be expected with a big bang. His theory was that the universe accelerated its expansion briefly very early in its existence. This does not necessarily contradict the basic idea of an expanding universe and is itself an unresolved issue. Another discovered phenomenon, the cosmic microwave background, seems to be compatible with the big bang. Then there are dark matter and dark energy, which, at this point, are theoretical entities used to explain galactic movement. They may be compatible with the big bang theory, but are not currently well understood. The discovery of quasars, which emit radio waves, has been useful for studying extremely distant objects and the matter between them and the earth.

The big bang theory is an important concept, because it summarizes all that we know about the early universe, which came into existence about fourteen billion years ago. It began very hot, expanded rapidly and gradually cooled down. The expansion that occurred was the stretching of space-time according to Einstein's theory of general relativity. At the particle level, the picture is far more complex and requires the use of the Standard Model of particle physics. It currently looks as if it may never be possible to know exactly what happened in the first moment of the universe or anything before that. There is a lot of speculation which may be impossible to prove. One person thinks that the universe began as the opposite end of a black hole: a white hole. There may never be a way to prove this. We may also never know whether there are other universes. Then there is the multiverse concept, in which new universes are created every moment: I find that theory unappealing. I think that future advances, probably with the assistance of AI, may produce some answers in these areas, though the theories may still be untestable.

The book is written in a light, humorous style, while the underlying ideas are quite complex, so the mental gymnastics can be strenuous. However, on the whole I found it highly instructive and it is probably better than the astronomy classes that I took in college.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

This is Elizabeth Kolbert's latest book, her first since The Sixth Extinction, which was published in 2014. Although the middle section of this book is similar to the last book, the focus changes from noting stressed species to examining previous human attempts to avert disasters and then looking at some of the strategies currently being discussed to reduce global warming. I found this book more informative, though, as was the case before, I thought that it meandered somewhat and put too much emphasis on writerly preferences instead of plainly spelling out the relevant facts. Kolbert has a specific journalistic strategy to engage non-scientific readers with issues that are relevant to all of us, and this includes a New Yorker writing style which will appeal to some readers more than others. As I said of her last book, I could have done without the personal details of the scientists whom she interviewed. Her manner isn't direct and sometimes appears whimsical, as she seems to like putting together pastiches that have a sort of artistic effect, in contrast to a more explicit analytical discussion that might be offered by a scientist.

The first section mainly discusses environmental control projects. The first chapter concerns the reversal of the direction of flow of the Chicago River and some of its unexpected consequences. This was done in order to prevent sewage from contaminating Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for Chicago. When Asian carp were introduced downstream because they are natural water cleaners, they became invasive, and extreme efforts were taken to keep them out of Lake Michigan, because they could outcompete other species and take over the entire Great Lakes. Although the original project was a success, this development was never anticipated and is an ongoing problem requiring new measures. The second chapter, which I thought was a better example, describes the efforts to protect New Orleans and the surrounding areas from flooding. In this instance, massive pumps, pipes and levees were installed to control water movement, but, over the years, it has been found that constant drainage causes the soil to compact, ultimately lowering the surface level. The consequence is that now, with rising sea levels, New Orleans is sinking and will continue to flood. This example shows how a massive engineering project initially met its objective yet will ultimately fail due to insurmountable obstacles. Kolbert doesn't explicitly state it, but the best solution may have been to permanently evacuate the entire region and allow the river to continue depositing silt, which would make the area less habitable but would return it to its former state. In my mind, Kolbert is actually a little timid, or she would have stated more directly that a city should never have been built there, and that flooding is inevitable. The best solution would have been to abandon the area years ago. It is just a matter of time before another major flood occurs, and the engineering has not produced a permanent solution.

In the middle section, the first chapter describes efforts to save the Devils Hole pupfish in Nevada from extinction. These are small fish that inhabit an underground cave. Then there is a chapter on protecting coral reefs and a chapter on the invasive cane toad in Australia. These three chapters discuss arcane techniques used by scientists to solve specific local problems with varying causes. I thought that they were interesting in their own right, but were not central to the main theme of the book.

The final section includes three chapters, the first of which discusses the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the storage of it underground in rock form or by burying trees. The second describes how calcium carbonate or sulphur dioxide could be disbursed in the stratosphere to make the earth more reflective and cool it down. This is where the book's title comes from, because adding reflectants to the stratosphere could make the sky white instead of blue. The third examines ice data from Greenland showing erratic temperatures during the Ice Age. It also discusses a failed project to build a large weapons facility beneath the Greenland ice.

The conclusion is that there is an awful lot of uncertainty in the ideas put forward to prevent catastrophic climate change. On the whole, I found the book informative, though, as I said, I don't particularly like this style of journalism. Kolbert attempts to recreate in real time her experience as a journalist as she conducted her research, and this gives the impression that she studied a random series of activities pursued by a variety of unrelated individuals whose goals all varied. The emphasis therefore tends to fall more on people than on a comprehensive solution to climate change. The case of the Devils Hole pupfish concerns the possible extinction of a species, and because Kolbert makes no effort to contextualize this with the other, far more serious problems discussed, it is difficult to know whether she thinks that the pupfish is an important species which should be saved or whether saving it is just an irrational human fetish. Though Kolbert does provide some sense that the main climate problems could be solved, the reader ends up with the feeling that the process is so haphazard that, even if it appears to be successful, there may be many unintended consequences or unforeseen aspects simply because humans are unable to deal with problems of this magnitude. This leaves the reader more unsettled than her last book did, which probably makes it better, given the gravity of the situation. Even so, I would have preferred a more controlled narrative, because, by the end of the book, it is difficult to believe that anyone has come up with a comprehensive plan to address climate change that is likely to succeed according to our needs. You primarily get the sense that all sorts of people are doing various kinds of research, that they are working independently, without coordination, and that, given the previous failures of projects of this magnitude, the outcome is unpredictable and we may all die. For me, the scope of the issue is so large that it deserves far more comprehensive discussion than a book of this nature is able to offer.

Diary

We had a fairly normal winter compared to last winter, with snow on the ground until recently and typical cold temperatures. There is also snow in the forecast for tonight. The only unusual thing was a tornado near our house on March 26. It was the first tornado to strike Vermont in March in sixty-five years. As tornados go, it was weak: only about seventy-five yards wide, traveling a mile and lasting five minutes. However, it did injure two people and damage some houses, as shown in the video. It occurred on Painter Rd., about two miles from here. 

The pandemic persists, and Vermont hasn't been doing as well lately. Its overall record has slipped behind that of Hawaii, to put it in second place among the states. Addison County is doing better than most of the counties, and Middlebury College has done exceptionally well. I'll be getting my second Moderna vaccine tomorrow, which will be a relief, though it seems that the coronavirus will be around for quite some time. At least the atmosphere in the country seems to be improving with Trump gone and Biden, so far, seeming to be competent. I am once again finding the daily news too boring to pay much attention to.

My life continues to be unexciting. Other than reading a little, going on walks and preparing for spring, there hasn't been much to do. I am getting ready to plant seeds indoors for transplanting outdoors in late May. There have been a few clear nights, and I set up my refractor telescope and have done a little stargazing. You can still see the Orion Nebula, and I always like looking at the Trapezium Cluster in it, which consists of newly-formed stars in a region with visible gas. However, the moon has been up, making most deep-sky viewing difficult. You can always look at the moon, but that doesn't excite me much. I am still spending time on investing, though the large stock market rally slowed down in February. But, if the coronavirus subsides, the rally will probably resume, because of the massive stimulus provided by the government. I have enjoyed outperforming hedge fund managers and getting rich. The last year has been one of those rare periods in which it has been possible to pick stocks and produce a higher return than the overall market. It is a satisfying feeling to become wealthier after fourteen years of retirement. I am looking forward to a little inflation, which has been almost nonexistent since 2009. 

William has been appreciating the warmer weather and spends more time outdoors when there is no snow on the ground. This means that he is starting to bring prey into the basement again. So far there has only been one vole and one mouse. Before the heavy snows, he caught a northern flying squirrel that escaped in the basement. It came upstairs and ran past me while I was sitting by the wood stove, and then it ran back down into the basement. I let it out by opening the basement door to the outside. I had never seen one before and it was rather cute, with large eyes, since they are nocturnal.

Although I found the Bertrand Russell biography rewarding, it was also a little tedious. It was one of the most thorough biographies I've read, but if you look that closely at anyone there will be things that you don't like. Russell was, in some ways, very creepy, and he never had to account for himself or the wreckage that he caused in the lives of some people. He claimed to have a normal moral sense, yet, time after time, he abruptly broke off relationships with friends, wives, children and grandchildren without offering any explanation or apology. Even his lawyer was shocked. I think that his daughter, Lady Katharine Tait, is still alive, at the age of ninety-seven, living in the same house in Cornwall, near Penzance, that her parents bought in 1922. 

I'm beginning to worry that I may be running out of good biographies to read, meaning ones that I would consider worthwhile. Good writing is hard to come across if you are at all selective. After having spent many years doing close readings of high-quality books, it is easy for me to become impatient with conventional books. I have started a new nonfiction book – short for a change – and will report on it in my next post. 

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 X

As the 1960's progressed, Russell became increasingly dependent on Ralph Schoenman. He founded the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, which, among other things, sought to draw attention to war crimes. Schoenman managed most of the day-to-day operations and traveled frequently while Russell remained at home. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the focus shifted to the Vietnam War. Although Russell remained relatively lucid up to the time of his death in 1970, his ideas during this period were often inconsistent and interspersed with Schoenman's ideas. While Russell's rhetoric was sometimes over-the-top, equating Lyndon Johnson with Hitler, Schoenman's rhetoric became explicitly Guevarist, which directly contradicted Russell's focus on peace. For a time, Schoenman seemed to emulate Ché Guevara, hopping around countries and inciting violent revolutions. Eventually, Russell was forced to disassociate himself completely from Schoenman.

Russell's family life remained problematic right up to the end. He did finally see his son, Conrad, who grew up to become a successful historian. He remained estranged from his son, John, who continued living with Dora after Harriet and Roddy had grown up and moved out, and he tried unsuccessfully to block John from seeing his children, Anne, Sarah and Lucy. Though Lucy had been a promising student in her early teens, she became a poor student and was sexually promiscuous later on. She was unable to gain admission to Oxford or Cambridge, and for a period had a Moroccan boyfriend who was subsequently deported. She traveled to Kathmandu and studied Buddhism. Both Lucy and Sarah were diagnosed with schizophrenia. The final tragedy occurred after Russell's death, when, in 1975, Lucy, at the age of twenty-six, poured kerosene on herself in a cemetery in Cornwall, ignited it and burned to death.  

My primary reaction to this biography is that I find it extremely depressing. However, there is a lot to think about, and the main categories that interest me concern what intellectual contributions Russell made, the nature of his relationships with other people, and the extent to which schizophrenia influenced his life. These three categories seem intertwined, and I find it difficult to unravel them. Ray Monk has provided a lot of information, but he wisely leaves the ultimate assessment to the reader.

Though I am not an expert on mathematical logic, my sense is that Russell was a failure as a thinker in that realm. Generally, he wanted to prove that mathematics could be derived from formal logic. My understanding is that this idea was disproven conclusively by Kurt Gödel, and, despite Monk being fuzzy on this point, I think that Russell realized that his main mathematical ideas were incorrect. I think that Russell intentionally moved from mathematics and philosophy to popular writing because he lacked the skills to be a major thinker. In my opinion, that was a good idea, because he was completely outclassed by Gödel and others. My sense is that, although Russell had a high IQ and was verbally fluent in an impressive manner, he was not really an original thinker. He reminds me of a book by Robert Sternberg that I read long ago, called The Triarchic Mind. That book isn't completely supported by research, but I think that it contains an important insight into what it means to be a good student. Sternberg discusses how students with high IQ's often sail through their undergraduate years with excellent academic records but, when they arrive in graduate school, they sometimes struggle, because there is a shift in emphasis from analytical skills to creative skills. The impression I have of Russell is that, after obtaining his degree at Cambridge, he found it difficult to work autonomously and came to rely heavily on Whitehead and, later, Wittgenstein for new ideas. He drifted into popular writing and public causes because they didn't require much creativity.

This lack of creativity also affected his personal relationships. I found it bizarre that Russell paid attention to Wittgenstein under the circumstances that they met, because Wittgenstein perfectly fit the description of a crank. Most academics would have ignored someone like that – Gottlob Frege did – but Russell must have been desperate for help. Eventually, the relationship broke down when Wittgenstein began to criticize Russell. Looking at this psychologically, Wittgenstein was seeking an intellectual niche in which he might excel, and Russell encouraged him, though, in my opinion, Wittgenstein ultimately contributed nothing of lasting value to philosophy. Russell completely cleared the way for him in academia by selling him as a genius, when, all things considered, Wittgenstein might have done better in a different field.

Wittgenstein is a good window for looking into how Russell misunderstood people. As mentioned earlier, he showed the symptoms of autism, and, though that wasn't a known psychiatric condition at the time, many recognized his odd behavior. Russell tended to think that people thought the way he did even when they didn't, and there are examples throughout the biography: Wittgenstein, D.H. Lawrence, Ottoline Morrell (whom he tried to teach mathematical logic), Joseph Conrad and Ralph Schoenman. Something similar occurred with his wives, and what is odd is that he broke completely with them when the relationships ended. Though that may partly have had to do with his pride and ego, I suspect that even when he thought things were going well with the women there were schisms that he was unable to see. It is possible that his schizophrenic tendencies caused him to react sharply once the bubble burst on what had been an artificial construct in his mind. Why did he consistently refuse to interact with his ex-wives? In every case, there is no evidence that the wives were in breach of any understanding that they had with him. Russell's extreme reaction must indicate some sort of psychological self-protection.

One example in which Russell seemed to misunderstand human nature, with hints of schizophrenia, occurred in his relationship with Dora after their divorce. When they were married, they were both completely idealistic about living without following oppressive social norms. Apparently neither of them had the common sense to recognize that if Dora had children with another man this could lead to dire consequences in their relationship. In fact, that is exactly what happened. Russell, as a nominal progressive, was initially happy to accept Griffin Barry's children as his own. Later, when he realized that they would be entitled to the aristocratic privileges associated with his name, he did a complete reversal and began to communicate with Dora only through his lawyer. The situation developed into absurdity when their son, John, proved to be seriously schizophrenic. Because John reflected badly on Russell, he completely abandoned him, along with Dora. Although this is a pretty murky area, I think that a case could be made that Russell experienced a significant cognitive dysfunction in his interpersonal relationships, and that schizophrenia was a likely culprit. Given Russell's behavior, one might simply conclude that he was selfish, but it seems probable that psychiatric conditions beyond his control affected him. Although he wrote an autobiography (which was partly intended to finance the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation), I don't think that it contains any explanation of why he treated some of his closest family members as badly as he did.

Regarding Russell's public life, I think that it is best described as trivial. As he grew older, he increasingly chose to emulate his grandfather, Lord John Russell, who was in fact one of the most significant British politicians of the nineteenth century. Russell never became a leader by any definition, and most of his political ideas were disorganized clichés – even his friend, Beatrice Webb, thought so. I found it embarrassing to read about his years with Ralph Schoenman. The main lasting influence from that period in his life, I think, is the enabling of other unproductive thinkers to follow his model as a public intellectual. The first example who comes to mind is Noam Chomsky. Like Russell, Chomsky appeals to younger generations, usually college students, who want to change the world for the better. But what you find in both Russell and Chomsky is a mishmash of uninformed and obsolete ideas that provide no outline for how a better society might be structured and what it might look like. This becomes obvious if you examine traditional Marxist rhetoric in terms of actual political conditions in recent years. According to the standard radical playbook, the proletariat must rise to overcome the bourgeoisie. However, if you look closely at what has happened lately, the populist groups in the U.S. and Europe, which may once have been labeled as the proletariat, seem mainly interested in becoming more bourgeois, i.e., although their economic situations aren't dire, they want higher incomes, larger houses, expensive cars, etc. It seems to me that neither Russell nor Chomsky had much of a sense of human nature. By painting various governments and people as evil, they achieve nothing more than arousing gullible youth.

On a more positive note – one less emphasized by Monk – Russell also advocated reason and science. This is a model that has been followed by Richard Dawkins and others in recent years. For most intelligent people, it is obvious that God, in the traditional Christian sense, does not exist. Thus, the non-existence of God is sort of a low-hanging fruit for people like Russell and Dawkins to expound upon. Perhaps Dawkins and Chomsky both follow Russell's model in the sense that they can use their writing skills to write popular books and receive a modicum of fame without actually producing any original or useful ideas.

I found it grueling to work though this very long biography, but in the end it was rewarding. Russell's mind was an unpleasant place to inhabit, though understanding it can produce insights. Whether all readers would benefit equally remains to be seen – I think not.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 IX

In 1960, Russell met Ralph Schoenman, a young American activist who quickly ingratiated himself with Russell through flattery. Schoenman almost became part of Russell's family at their house in Wales, and he had a major influence on Russell for several of the remaining years in Russell's life. Russell became involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Committee of 100, and before long he was speaking at large rallies in London and participating in demonstrations, which authorities grew tired of. He was jailed briefly in 1961. By then he had become an international spokesperson against nuclear armament, though his positions varied over time. Usually he proposed unilateral disarmament, but on one occasion he seemed to support nuclear weapons as a deterrent. This activism was initially connected with the Labor Party, but soon took an independent turn. As previously, Russell had disagreements with others and proved once again to be poor at reconciling differences with real or perceived foes. I must confess that my eyes glaze over almost immediately when I read about politics, in which the underlying issues are almost never addressed and the discussion is endless.

Perhaps the pinnacle of Russell's fame occurred in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He sent telegrams to world leaders such as John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and U Thant, and though, in his mind, his actions contributed to a reconciliation, that seems unlikely according to knowledgeable sources. In 1963, he and Schoenman also became involved in a Sino-Indian border conflict, during which Schoenman made a fool of himself while visiting China on Russell's behalf. Schoenman was, as Monk describes him, a simplistic radical, and, with Russell, engaged in complex international conflicts which far exceeded their expertise. I think that Russell loved being the center of attention, but the truth was that all he was good for, particularly when he was in his nineties, was a few good slogans: war is bad; nuclear was is very bad; a world government could reduce conflicts; there are too many people.... One of Russell's weaknesses throughout his life was a tendency to make sweeping statements without understanding all the facts, and this condition only worsened in his old age. He liked playing the oracular philosopher for effect, but often had little to back it up. In this respect, he took advantage of the fact that most people didn't have the slightest idea that modern academic philosophy was merely an esoteric subject with no significant applications. His political views wavered over time. Initially he favored socialism, but when he saw what the U.S.S.R was like, he decided that, though he disliked capitalism, the U.S. was the best country to follow in the immediate future. Then, when nuclear weapons came into existence, he perceived the U.S. as a threat to mankind. It is notable, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that Russell did not have command of all the facts, and he misattributed the defusing of a potentially catastrophic nuclear confrontation to his shrewd negotiation techniques. In his house and in the village of Portmeirion, Wales he was treated as if he were the savior of mankind, but that sentiment didn't spread very far.

I should mention that at this point Russell's household was freefalling into chaos, just as his previous households had. His grandchildren, Anne, Sarah and Lucy (though Anne was not biologically related), disliked the family environment and felt ignored by both Russell and Edith. They spent most of their time away at school, but it is significant that they felt displaced by both Edith and Ralph Schoenman in Russell's attention. No one seemed to have cared about their emotional needs, and this is reminiscent of the experiences of John and Kate. I have peeked ahead, and there is yet another family disaster looming.

As you may be able to tell, the further I delve into this biography, the less impressed I become with Bertrand Russell. Fortunately for me – and you, if you're sick of reading about Bertrand Russell too – I have only a few pages left and will finish up on my next post. I have little criticism of Ray Monk, because, unlike many biographers, he has refrained from idealizing his subject and has dutifully reported his concerns about Russell's character. Our misery will be over soon. I am reserving my final conclusion for then.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 VIII

Up until mid-1955, John spent time in various psychiatric institutions with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Russell wanted nothing more to do with him and attempted to have him certified as insane and live in psychiatric hospitals for the rest of his life. However, authorities decided that John's mental state wasn't serious enough for that, and he ended up living with his mother, Dora, in London. Russell sold his house in Richmond and moved permanently to Wales with Edith and the three children. Although Russell hated all interaction with Dora, an agreement was reached in which he would pay her to take care of John. Her financial situation at the time was grim, and she had been living in London with Harriet and Roddy. 

While these problems with John were occurring, Russell returned to public life with radio broadcasts. He was concerned that a nuclear war could occur and worked to convince world leaders to take steps to avert that outcome. He organized an international panel of physicists with both capitalist and socialist orientations to discuss the risks and report to political leaders. He contacted Albert Einstein, who supported his efforts but died immediately after sending his letter in 1955. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was published in 1955, and an international meeting called the Pugwash Conference occurred in 1957 and in successive years. Russell also wrote editorials encouraging Eisenhower and Khrushchev to meet. 

During this period, Russell attempted to engage the philosophy community in England. The center of gravity in the field had moved from Cambridge to Oxford, and Russell wrote essays attacking the views of prominent philosophers there, such as Gilbert Ryle and Peter Strawson. He also painted the Oxford philosophers as effete academics. One of the unfortunate characteristics of Russell was that, especially as he grew older, he tended to personalize his views in a manner that attempted to put him in a superior light. Thus, although he may have had a point, his efforts always came across as self-aggrandizement, and they fell flat. Increasingly, Russell saw himself as a towering intellectual icon, though only the general public saw him that way, and the professionals simply dismissed him. 

Russell's daughter, Kate, had stayed in the U.S. and dropped out of academia. She married a graduate student and had three children. In 1960, her family traveled to England and visited Russell and Dora separately. Besides completely losing interest in John, Russell had never been very engaged with Kate. Overall, she was much more stable than John, though she did suffer from depression, and academically she seems to have been considerably more talented. The enormous rift between Russell and Dora had had a significant effect on her childhood, and she had hoped to discuss it with him on this visit, but she never had the opportunity. Ironically, the solution that Kate had found for herself was Christianity, which seems, for her, to have filled the vacuum created by her father's callous intellectual approach to everything.

I will probably have more to say later about Russell's foibles, but I'll make a few comments now. When you look at his life, there is a fairly clear picture in which, when he was young, he concocted various theories completely in the abstract, and they usually turned out to be incorrect. The main example, insofar as his family is concerned, has to do with the idea that the puritanical environment created by his grandmother while he was growing up made him uncomfortable and guilty, stunting his development as a person. The theory was that if he had an open marriage and his children were raised without inhibitions, they would grow up to become psychologically robust adults. In the comments that Ray Monk has provided so far, there is no evidence that Russell ever conceded that his theory of child-rearing was merely a convenient position to hold, and that it failed miserably because, even if it had some basis in fact, his execution of it was a complete failure. In my view, Russell mainly wanted to have free access to as many sexual partners as possible, and he was not at all interested in making sure that his children were raised properly. In the end, the way that he handled family matters was quite similar to the way that his Victorian grandparents had: children have no rights, and the goal is to maintain the family's social standing at all costs. It has been noted that the attitudes of his last wife, Edith, did in fact resemble his grandmother's in some respects. Thus, he didn't really care what happened to Kate, because she was a female and not the male heir. He paid far more attention to John, but when John was unable to live up to his expectations, he simply dumped him. There is a pattern in Russell's behavior that indicates an unusual coldness towards others when he no longer finds any use for them and they represent a challenge to his self-image. Thus, when Wittgenstein, D.H. Lawrence, Dora and Peter criticized him, he demonized them and broke off the relationships with no discussion. As a reader, my sense is that Russell did have some schizophrenia-related cognitive misperceptions, which, though not debilitating, provide an explanation for his coldness, which I think was inborn and had nothing to do with his childhood. I think that many of his views reflect his particular personality and are not applicable to most others. One might argue that his grandmother was trying to do him a favor when she told him not to have children, but he was unable to recognize the soundness of her reasoning due to an inherent lack of understanding of other people.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 VII

Special note to those of you who are obsessed with Bertrand Russell's sex life:

March 23, 2024. This post is so popular that I thought I'd add a comment. While there is a chance that Russell did have sex with his son John's wife, Susan, I think it is unlikely for the following reasons:

1. It is possible that Russell was impotent by 1950.

2. The whole point of having John and his family live with him was to stabilize them to prevent embarrassment to himself.

3. The only source that I've found for the idea is Anne, John's adopted daughter. She was only about five years old when this would have occurred and probably couldn't assess the situation accurately.

4. Russell's opinion of Susan could not have been good: he helped John divorce her later.

                                                                        ***

Russell was so active over such a long period and so many details of his daily life survive that it is a strain to read this biography at times. He rose to great prominence in England after World War II, in part because he had supported the war, unlike World War I, during which he had been a pacifist. In 1948, while on a lecture tour, his plane crashed into the sea between Oslo and Trondheim, and only those in the smoking compartment, where Russell sat, survived. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1949 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. He was dumbfounded by the latter, since he had never published any fiction or poetry, but it encouraged him to write short stories, which, according to Monk, weren't very good. He also came to represent the U.K. in semi-official international meetings. Throughout this period, Russell continued to lecture, and his main concerns at the time were the possibility of a nuclear war and the dangers of the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors. His last lecture tour in the U.S. occurred in 1951. 

Russell's marriage to Peter did eventually collapse, and Peter left with Conrad, whom Russell didn't see again for nearly twenty years. Because his divorce from Dora had been extremely contentious, he did not engage in a legal battle with Peter. His relationship with Colette O'Niel never revived, and they broke up permanently. While Russell was in the process of separating from Peter and seeing Colette, he had another short affair with a woman named Nalle Kielland. After this, he took up a relationship with Edith Finch, who was a friend of a friend from Bryn Mawr whom he had met many years earlier. They were married in December, 1952, when Russell was eighty and she was fifty-two. Edith was different from his previous wives in that she liked order and had a more conservative personality, and they had a harmonious marriage. She seems to have been more supportive than Dora or Peter had been, thereby not triggering his animosity. It may also be relevant that Russell had prostate surgery shortly after the marriage and perhaps no longer had a roving eye.

The main event in the section I'm reading concerns the disastrous developments in the life of his son, John. In 1945, John traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend a party given by Kate, who was just beginning graduate school. On that trip he met a college friend, Maurice Friedman, and Susan Lindsay, the daughter of the poet Vachel Lindsay, who was then nineteen. Susan had given birth to a baby from her previous boyfriend, and Friedman married her in December. However, the marriage collapsed after just two months, and John decided to marry Susan. This situation grew into a major family disaster. Susan's mental state can hardly be considered stable. Besides the indications of her promiscuity, her father had committed suicide by drinking lye. Moreover, although John was clearly homosexual, he held the mistaken idea that his homosexuality was caused by his mother and could be cured. To make matters worse, Griffin Barry, himself a failed writer, had convinced John to become a writer. I think that this was all an obvious disaster-in-progress, but perhaps because it was occurring on a different continent and Russell refused to communicate with Dora, no action was taken to remedy the situation until it was too late.

John and Susan married in the U.S. in 1946, and John adopted Susan's daughter, Anne. They had their own daughter, Sarah, in 1947 and moved to England that year. John had received an inheritance from his father and proceeded to run through it by living in luxury in London, hiring an expensive governess and seeing an expensive psychoanalyst. To complicate matters, John and Susan had another daughter, Lucy, in 1948. Neither John nor Susan were interested in taking care of their children, and their household became chaotic. Susan continued her affairs with other men. John could not hold down a job, and they began to run out of money. In early 1949, when John was twenty-eight, a plan was made for Russell to buy a large house and share it with John, Susan and the three children. Russell found a house in Richmond, near the house where he had grown up, and had major renovations made to accommodate the family. 

The chaos continued at the new house, though, for a time, Russell seems to have developed a close relationship with Susan. When Russell married Edith in 1952, she moved in and apparently put her foot down regarding household behavior. On the surface, the home seemed calm initially, but on Christmas, 1953, after dinner, John and Susan announced that they were "tired of children" and left the house forever, "taking the remainder of the food, but leaving the children." John and Susan moved to Wales, where their psychiatric conditions continued to deteriorate. Susan launched a new affair with a man named Wordsworth, and John proceeded to divorce her with the help of his father. By December, 1954, John had become psychologically unhinged, and he was taken to a psychiatric ward and began a long period of hospitalization. The children were temporarily left in Russell's custody. 

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 VI

According to Monk, there is no record of what Russell spoke about or how people reacted to the 1940 William James Lectures. John and Kate remained in California until 1941 and grew to enjoy their independence. When they moved to Pennsylvania to live with Russell, Peter and Conrad, they became despondent. Then, probably with help from Russell in John's case, John and Kate transferred to Harvard and Radcliffe, respectively, in the fall. Russell's job at the Barnes Foundation initially went well, and he continued to take other jobs on the side. However, Peter became increasingly restless and troublesome. In 1941 she was thirty-one years old to Russell's sixty-nine years, and, compared to Russell's earlier wives, she was more emotionally demanding. Russell merely attempted to humor her, but that didn't work. It was a rather ironic situation for Russell to be working at the Barnes Foundation, because the purpose of the Foundation was to enrich the lives of underprivileged people by exposing them to the arts. Barnes had acquired one of the best collections of Impressionist paintings in the world (which I would like to see at some point). In contrast, Russell was a closet elitist who usually hid his disdain for ordinary people. Perhaps intentionally to stir up trouble, Peter attended events at the Foundation and routinely offended the staff by being snobby and disruptive. This became so significant that Barnes fired Russell in 1942. However, the situation worked out well for Russell, because he successfully sued for breach of contract and was awarded $20,000, which covered his expenses for some time.

Russell remained in the U.S. until 1944, when he was offered a position at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1943, before he got the position and sailed back, he spent time in Princeton, New Jersey, where he met Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel and Wolfgang Pauli. It does not appear that Russell enjoyed their company. Knowing Russell well by now, I think that he was probably hobnobbing with people at the Institute for Advanced Study in order to obtain a position there. The main complaint I have about Ray Monk's narration is that he doesn't sufficiently emphasize the importance of Gödel's work in relation to Russell's work. This may be in part because, by 1943, Russell's interest in mathematical logic had evaporated, but the fact remains that Gödel's incompleteness theorem of 1931conclusively refuted the central argument of Principia Mathematica by proving that it is impossible to use the axiomatic method to construct a mathematical theory that entails all of the truths in any particular branch of mathematics. Gödel was one of the preeminent mathematicians of the twentieth century and the final word on mathematical logic, but both Monk and Russell act almost as if he were just some guy who worked at the Institute for Advanced Study. It is conceivable that Russell never read any of Gödel's work – indicating to me that Russell's intellectual curiosity was rather limited, and that he was primarily motivated by the desire for fame. In major thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein – or Kurt Gödel – there is a doggedness that one does not see in Russell, and Russell's drift from serious academic work to popular writing and lecturing probably reveals his intellectual limitations. The most productive thinkers often dwell on the same questions for many years, a process which probably leads to greater insights than those produced by more superficial thinkers.

Because of the war situation, John chose an accelerated graduation program at Harvard and finished in 1943. He returned to England, joined the Royal Navy and trained in Japanese language translation in London before being sent to Washington, D.C. While living in Washington, he ran into Griffin Barry, the father of his half-siblings by Dora, and they occupied the same apartment for a time. This probably facilitated John's reckoning with his homosexuality, because he apparently confided in Barry, who was bisexual. John had taken an interest in Barry's children, Harriet and Roddy, while living in London. In 1945, John led a futile letter campaign to resolve family issues so that Harriet and Roddy wouldn't have to live through discordant childhoods similar to those that he and Kate had experienced.

Russell had been working on A History of Western Philosophy with help from Peter while still living in the U.S., and it was published in 1945 in the U.S. and 1946 in the U.K. The book was popular and increased his renown. He also became a BBC broadcaster. Nevertheless, at Trinity College, his estrangement from academic philosophers continued. He attempted to write essays which would appeal to both the public and academics, but the academics generally had lukewarm or negative responses. Wittgenstein was then at Trinity College and had many followers in ordinary language philosophy, a subject in which Russell took no interest. I think that philosophy had become a faddish academic subject by then, and it was hard to take seriously, even for Russell. To this day, philosophers often cannibalize other subjects without saying anything memorable to people other than academic philosophers.

In 1946, Peter made a serious suicide attempt, for which her stomach had to be pumped, and Russell subsequently shipped her off to live in a house in North Wales while he remained in Cambridge. Though their relationship hadn't completely collapsed yet, Russell took the opportunity to meet Colette O'Niel, his old girlfriend, whom he hadn't seen in years. There is a good example of Russell's dishonesty to be found here: at the time, he wrote to Colette, "Every moment of my visit to you was a joy," yet, in about 1949, he wrote to Peter saying, according to Monk, "that Colette was by this time middle-aged, very fat, nearly stone deaf and without any traces of her former beauty." Russell also made overtures to the wife of a Cambridge academic and unsuccessfully tried once again to interest Gamel Brenan, the writer. The unraveling of his marriage to Peter is ongoing.

I am slowly creeping toward the end of the book, but probably won't finish for another month.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 V

In 1937, Russell's financial situation became precarious. Peter had become pregnant the previous year, and his second son, Conrad, was born in April. He wanted time for serious academic work, but, without lecturing in the U.S. or writing popular books, he had insufficient income. Besides his family expenses, he was required to make payments to both Dora and his brother's widow. For this reason, Telegraph House was sold, the family moved temporarily to Oxford, and Russell searched for an academic position. Because he had been outside academia for several years, he could not find an academic post in England. Therefore, he looked to the U.S. for whatever jobs there might be. He contacted the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton but was turned down.  He did manage to receive a one-year contract as Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago for 1938-1939. Then, in April, 1938, Ottoline Morrell, one of his oldest friends, died. 

He, Peter and Conrad traveled to Chicago in September, 1938 and lived near the campus. Russell enjoyed the intellectual environment at the University and had opportunities to discuss philosophical issues with Rudolf Carnap, the German philosopher, who was there at the time. However, in the spring, his contract was not renewed, and he once again sought employment. He was offered a three-year position at U.C.L.A. and moved to California in 1939 with Peter and Conrad. Before his contract period began, he squeezed in a short lecture tour. After negotiating with Dora, John and Kate joined them. At the time, Dora was having trouble keeping the Beacon Hill School in operation, because, with World War II looming, wealthy Americans didn't want to send their children to school in Europe. Russell did not find U.C.L.A. agreeable and was distracted by the war. Therefore, he chose to break his contract with U.C.L.A. and seek employment elsewhere. Peter, apparently, had another affair and greatly disliked John; she briefly considered moving out. Russell was offered the William James Lectures at Harvard for 1940. He also found a job teaching at C.C.N.Y. for 1941-1942. The C.C.N.Y. job turned into a major fiasco, because some people who had read his popular books considered him immoral and objected to his appointment. After a court case, for which he did not have to appear, the offer was rescinded.

At this point, Russell heard from Dr. Albert C. Barnes, of the Barnes Foundation, and, quite unusually, ended up receiving an offer to teach there. This was quite a strange situation, since the school was an art school and Russell didn't know anything about art. Barnes was an eccentric but had complete control over the Foundation, and he agreed to let Russell deliver one lecture per week on philosophy, with very high wages. As far as I've read, Russell, Peter and Conrad moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the fall of 1940 for the William James Lectures, and then, in January, 1941, to the Philadelphia suburbs, near the Barnes Foundation, with John and Kate staying in California and attending U.C.L.A., which neither of them liked. I don't think that the Barnes Foundation job is going to end well – we'll see. 

As you can tell, Russell's life at this stage, at the age of sixty-eight, was quite a frenzy. I am only able to fit in the bare outlines of what transpired. Monk devotes considerable space to the discussion of Russell's philosophical ideas at the time and evaluates how well they agreed with those of his philosophical contemporaries. According to Monk, Russell argued that experiences are internal ones that occur in the brain and are not the same as external events, whereas other philosophers considered external events real. I still think that this is all a lot of nonsense and am not spending much time thinking about it. Russell seems to have been a die-hard Platonist who wanted to discover objective truths by using a precise language that corresponded exactly with reality. What I have found is that philosophers rarely agree on anything, and that their "arguments" can safely be construed as exotic ephemera. My current view is that all language, including logic and mathematics, is the result of an evolutionary process that allowed humans to exchange knowledge, along with other cultural functions. There is nothing special about language outside a human context. This is why AI is already able to accurately predict phenomena without resorting to the use of symbolic notation. Contrary to what Russell and Wittgenstein thought in their early years, language has no connection with eternal truths. I think that the authoritative pronouncements made by philosophers in these areas are slightly ludicrous. Wittgenstein, at least, in his later thinking, seems to have taken language off the pedestal that he had placed it on earlier – though one dare not paraphrase a philosopher! For me, the main interest of this biography is Russell's life, since I don't consider him to have been an important thinker. In some ways he seems to have been a prototype for later public intellectuals – who rarely offered useful ideas. The possibility remains that in the future both philosophers and mathematicians will be unemployable.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 IV

Russell's older brother, Frank, died in 1931, making Bertrand the 3rd Earl Russell and a member of the House of Lords. Monk doesn't say much about Frank's life, but it was at least as chaotic as Bertrand's. He was married three times, and his first marriage lasted only three months. That divorce was ugly and took ten years to resolve. Frank established residence in the U.S., got a divorce in Reno, and married another woman there in 1910. However, the divorce was not recognized in the U.K., and in 1911 Frank was arrested and convicted in the House of Lords for bigamy. Frank's first wife had accused him of sodomy, echoing the suspicions of homosexuality from his university years. However, Frank's life was a little simpler than Bertrand's, because he had no children. I think that Monk could have used Frank's history to explore Bertrand's psychodynamics, but chose not to. Given the mountains of documents that Monk had to sort through already, I don't blame him.

Prior to Russell's divorce from Dora, Dora moved the Beacon Hill School out of Telegraph House, and over the next few years she moved it to several different locations due to financial difficulties. Under agreement with Russell, John and Kate no longer attended the school, and they were transferred to the Dartington School, a snobby, upper-class school. Dora never stopped supporting ordinary workers, and when she showed up at the Dartington School to visit John and Kate, Kate was embarrassed by her shabby clothing. During this period, Dora also befriended a slightly seedy man named Pat Grace, who had been a friend of Paul Gillard. Russell and Peter moved into Telegraph House, and Peter exhausted herself converting it from a school into a comfortable family dwelling. Peter was not always happy with Russell's company and had an affair with Richard Llewelyn Davies, the son of Russell's lawyer. This put Russell on edge, but eventually Peter married Russell in January, 1936. Peter had a background in history and assisted Russell as a researcher and a secretary. One of their first projects was The Amberley Papers, which were drawn from his parents' letters and diaries. By all accounts, the two-volume set is boring to read, since the Amberleys lived in a calm part of the Victorian period, led uneventful, pampered lives and had no impact on their contemporaries.

Peter had difficulty adjusting to Russell's friends, who were about forty years older than she was and were starting to die off by the late 1930's. Bloomsbury-style conversations strained her, because they required exceptional conversational skills, which she did not possess. Furthermore, Peter came from a humbler background than most of them. Even Dora, who was upper-middle-class, had been better prepared. Dora had also done very well at Oxford, whereas Peter had dropped out.

Russell and Peter made some new friends, Gerald and Gamel Brenan. Gerald was a British writer with Bloomsbury connections and had a house in Churriana, Spain, near Málaga, where they spent part of the year. Russell and Peter went on a holiday there shortly after their marriage. Although they remained on friendly terms with the Brenans, the Brenans noticed Russell's faults, and his spellbinding ability as a conversationalist didn't exonerate him. Besides being self-centered, he could be vicious when he disagreed with someone or something, and he lacked empathy. Thus, when Russell became attracted to Gamel, an American writer, and followed his usual pattern of seduction, she was alert to the risks and didn't succumb.

Monk sporadically comments on Russell's writings from different time periods. He points out inconsistencies in Russell's ideas even in the same book. Sometimes the writing is just plain sloppy. By his sixties, Russell regretted not having pursued a different field, such as physics or biochemistry. People like Albert Einstein got far more attention than he did, and he seemed to recognize that philosophy was not a terribly important subject as far as most people were concerned. I think that it was practically a dead subject when he entered it, and that his attempt to resuscitate it with mathematical logic was a naïve idea that failed. In my view, the so-called analytic philosophy that Russell helped originate evolved into an academic dead end even during his lifetime. Although Charles Darwin wasn't much of a philosopher, his ideas opened the only sensible way to think about humans: as animals. For me, the terminology now used by analytic philosophers is just a fancy, distracting way of saying nothing and is unintelligible outside a specialized academic setting. The sciences, on the other hand, continue to provide useful insights, and Russell probably sensed that. Nevertheless, I don't think that Russell was cut out to be a scientist, because he tended to inject his opinions into everything and did not typically have what would be considered an empirical approach. He was far too restless to carefully accrue knowledge over a long period of time.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 III

I've reached the point at which Russell's credibility as a thinker and a decent person becomes trying, to put it mildly. In 1929, Russell went on another fund-raising lecture tour of the U.S. Since the Beacon Hill School wasn't sufficiently profitable, Russell's income from the U.S. had become crucial for his financial survival. He continued to churn out popular writing of increasingly lower quality and even became a syndicated columnist in the U.S. This was the easiest possible work for him, because he could churn it out with little or no effort. By 1929, Russell detested his American lectures and on his tours had begun to have one-night stands with enthusiastic women from the audiences. He dutifully reported them to Dora, and she took them lightly. However, while he was away she became pregnant by Griffin Barry, and that was the beginning of the end of her marriage to Russell. There were other complications associated with Barry. Apparently he was bisexual, and he had had a relationship with an Englishman named Paul Gillard, who was homosexual. Gillard's background is largely unknown, but he apparently had connections with communists, and he lived under the pretense of having an adventurous secret life, though he probably didn't. Dora was extremely attracted to Gillard, whereas Russell, when he met him, couldn't stand him. Dora's baby, Harriet, was born in July, 1930, and this began to put a strain on her relationship with Russell.

Dora hired Patricia Spence, who went by the name "Peter," as a governess for John and Kate. Peter was twenty years old and an Oxford undergraduate, and soon Russell, who turned fifty-eight in 1930, began an affair with her. In 1931, Peter became pregnant, presumably by Russell, and either had an abortion or a miscarriage in July. She dropped out of Oxford and did not complete her degree. Dora became pregnant again by Barry at the same time as Peter, and their second child, Roderick, was born in 1932. During this period, the Russells usually spent their summers at their house in Cornwall and the rest of the year at the Beacon Hill School. At various times, Dora, Russell, Peter, Barry and Gillard could be found at the school, along with Dora's four children. However, Barry eventually left for the U.S. looking for literary work.

As of 1932, Dora and Russell's marriage started to collapse. Russell had lost interest in Dora several years earlier but had played along with her to humor her, and she hadn't noticed his insincerity. They had discussions about how to organize their lives, but Russell became extremely concerned about the potential passing of his aristocratic credentials to Barry's children. With Barry away, Dora imagined herself to be in love with Paul Gillard, but Gillard died under mysterious circumstances in 1933. By then, Russell was actively pursuing a divorce from Dora that would leave him with rights to see John and Kate in the aftermath. The divorce became extremely acrimonious, with Russell and his lawyer seeking dirt on Dora in case they needed it. That wasn't difficult, since there were disgruntled employees at the Beacon Hill School, and John and Kate were unhappy. Kate preferred Peter to Dora. Peter was quite beautiful and had a lively, playful personality. Because of protracted negotiations, the marriage was not dissolved until July, 1935, with John and Kate, then aged thirteen and eleven, becoming the wards of trustees, and neither Russell nor Dora had custody.

Ray Monk comments on the underlying psychology of Russell and Dora, but I don't think that he takes his analysis far enough. In the case of Dora, she comes across as an extremely naïve progressive who thought that she could have an open marriage, support communism and speak her mind without any negative repercussions. She must not have been very perceptive, or she would have noticed that Russell didn't particularly share her beliefs and was just leading her on in order to achieve his objectives. His primary goal in the relationship was to have children, and in fact Dora had not been his first choice for the mother. Ottoline Morrell didn't want more children and Colette O'Niel didn't want to interrupt her acting career for children. Dora was Russell's third choice, and several of his older friends disliked her. The way Monk describes her, Dora seems to have been unaware of the precariousness of her situation. By the time Dora had given birth to John and Kate, Russell was already becoming tired of her, and their sexual relationship ended. Dora reminds me of the American feminist progressives of the 1970's who felt empowered at the time but actually just alienated men and for the most part didn't even find good jobs or have happier lives than their mothers. Dora had an ideological frame of mind, but lacked the ability to modify her ideas on the basis of real-world experience.

Russell himself is far more annoying than Dora, because he was disingenuous and manipulative. He could talk up a storm convincing women to have sex with him, but he quickly lost interest in them and eventually displayed bald indifference toward them. Besides being a shameless sexist, he was also an unapologetic elitist. However, it seems to me that Russell's most significant failings were in his actual lack of intellectual achievement. His early works, which had provided the basis for his academic reputation, were, to my understanding, incorrect. For the rest of his life he churned out what can reasonably be described as journalism. His popular philosophical writing is generally considered unsuitable for academic use. I also find that his conception of psychology was primitive by today's standards. There were several occasions in which he instantly decided that someone he met was just like him, which later proved not to be the case. This may have occurred in his relationship with Joseph Conrad, but Conrad conveniently died in 1924, before Russell could be disabused. After his grandmother, Lady Russell, warned him in no uncertain terms that if he had children they would be mentally ill, rather than heed her words, which were firmly based on her experience of raising mentally-ill children, he seemed to delude himself by thinking that he was fine but had simply been raised badly. I think that part of his motivation to have children was to prove that if they were raised properly they would turn out to be well-adjusted adults and disprove Lady Russell's argument. He dabbled superficially in behaviorism and Freudian theory and pretended to be involved with his children's upbringing, but they do not seem to have been close to him, and there is no evidence that they benefited from either his or Dora's parenting. By 1935, his theory was blowing up in his face, with both John and Kate exhibiting psychiatric disorders which may actually have been exacerbated by their parents.

On these fronts, conditions in Russell's personal life only continue to deteriorate. In the next chapter, he commences his third bad marriage, with Peter, and I'm already depressed thinking about it.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 II

There is so much day-to-day information on Russell's life in this book that I can only take it in small doses. It doesn't help that Russell was already well past his intellectual peak by 1924, and his personal life is beginning to look like a fiasco. Dora came into her own as a political activist and an advocate of birth control and wrote books that became popular. At times she and Russell agreed in these matters, but, when it came to politics, he was hardly a man of the people. As a Victorian aristocrat, during his life he had previously had little contact with ordinary workers. Though he admired the Chinese, he disliked the Russians and the African-Americans whom he met, and he had no affinity for the working class. Dora was extremely progressive and liked to think that she was helping the human cause. Russell, on the other hand, vacillated, and whenever he became engaged as a political activist he was soon repulsed by the people. He continued to write books when he had enough time and branched out into science journalism. Since he was familiar with mathematics, he described special and general relativity for lay readers and became popular in that genre.

Because both Russell and Dora were interested in childhood education, they founded the Beacon Hill School in 1927. It was located at Telegraph House, in Sussex, and they rented the property from his brother, Frank. They wanted to give their children, John and Kate, good educations that would infuse them with progressive ideas in the hope that they would become well-adjusted adults. Although the school seems to have had some success, there was not enough money in it to support the family, and it interfered with Russell's writing and lecturing. Dora also had a public career, which caused her to be away lecturing at times. Conspicuously, the living arrangement, with all the teachers and students living on the property, seems chaotic. Russell was having an affair with Alice Stücki, a Swiss governess who had originally been hired to teach John French. Dora was having an affair with a man named Roy Randall, who also became part of the staff. During this period, Russell was impotent in his relationship with Dora, probably for psychological reasons.

As far as I've read, the school isn't working well for John and Kate. They were treated the same as the other students and often felt ignored by their parents. Moreover, many of the other students had behavioral problems and were intentionally sent there by their parents for that reason. The environment seems to have been unfavorable for John, who was often bullied by the other boys. This arrangement seems especially bizarre when you consider that Russell supposedly had a deep love for John and wanted to raise him as well as possible. Monk says that Russell was trying to prevent the psychological strains that he had experienced as a result of the early deaths of his parents. So far, John isn't doing very well, even though he is favored over Kate, who seems to be more intellectually talented and more psychologically stable.

In Monk's telling, Dora is beginning to look rather insensitive and self-indulgent. Specifically, he thinks that Russell was emotionally weak and required a lot of female support, though he himself was egocentric. It sounds as if Dora had a rather naïve progressive ideology in which people loved whomever they wanted to love, and everything fell into place. My take is that she was a highly extroverted person who was incapable of maintaining relationships of any depth. Although Russell himself was rather cold, Dora's insensitivity was difficult for him to bear. On a speaking tour of the U.S., Dora began another affair with another man, Griffin Barry, a left-wing journalist who also admired the Soviet Union and had befriended the American radical, John Reed. As you might expect, this free-love scenario is teetering toward disaster, but it's unravelling at a snail's pace in the book. From my point of view, this is an example of how people who live in the world of ideas can become completely detached from reality and, in the process, lose sight of the fact that they are biological entities who have countless genetic constraints, many of which lie beyond their conception. While Russell didn't have a perfect grasp of the situation, in hindsight he certainly seems to have had a better insight than Dora into the weaknesses of the Soviet Union, which subsequently evolved into one of the most corrupt dictatorships in the world.

In general, I am still sympathetic with Russell, because he recognized that the way forward for humanity was to follow science. However, it appears that he himself did not have much of a scientific mind, and he often seems to have jumped to erroneous conclusions because he didn't consider matters carefully over long periods. This is why more plodding thinkers, such as Charles Darwin, are able to produce more significant results than quick-thinking, intellectually adept thinkers such as Russell.

I had hoped to move faster through the book, but I'm afraid it's going to take a long time.

Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 I

This second volume, also by Ray Monk, covers the second half of Bertrand Russell's life. It gets off to a rather unpromising start, with Monk warning that during this period Russell seemed increasingly egocentric to his friends, and they also thought that the quality of his writing had declined. Beatrice Webb was disappointed that he didn't produce any significant works on politics or socialism. Ottoline Morrell was disappointed that he wasted his time raising his son, John, rather than engaging in important intellectual work. By 1922, he was becoming more famous than ever, because he, along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore, were considered the founders of analytic philosophy, which had taken root in the U.K. and U.S. and had an offshoot in Austria, known as the Vienna Circle, led by Moritz Schlick. Russell had practically stopped reading philosophical works and devoted most of his time to political articles and lectures. He thought that taking a university position would be problematic, since he was divorced, and that in any case he could make more money on popular topics.

In 1922, shortly after John's birth, he bought a house near the ocean in Cornwall to live for part of the year. When he wasn't working, he spent much of his time with John and tried to employ some quack behavioral techniques with the goal of making John self-confident and independent when he grew up. In those days, behaviorism was popular, and its followers apparently believed in the erroneous "blank slate" theory of psychological development. So far, John is scared to go into the ocean and is afraid of shadows.

Later that year he had his last friendly meeting with Wittgenstein in Innsbruck. By then, the Tractatus had been published, and the two still disagreed. On the one hand, Russell was a Platonist who wanted to derive all of mathematics from logic, while, on the other hand, Wittgenstein thought that all logic boiled down to tautologies and said nothing about the world. At this point they also had different worldviews. Russell had practically given up on philosophy and thought that it could be replaced by the empirical sciences; he also considered world issues, such as politics, important, though he tended to tire of them easily.  Wittgenstein was obsessed with personal morality and self-improvement. Russell came away from this meeting lumping Wittgenstein in with D.H. Lawrence as a "mystic," though that term is hardly an appropriate description of either. Lawrence was a poet, novelist, painter and utopian thinker, whereas Wittgenstein, I have decided, was autistic. 

Although I don't always seek outside sources to corroborate or dispute statements made in a biography or autobiography that I've read, I came across some recent comments describing Wittgenstein as autistic, and this provided an "Aha!" moment for me. While Monk seems to be doing a good job discussing the oddities of Russell's personality, I think that he has completely missed a key opportunity to unravel the psychodynamics of Wittgenstein. This isn't entirely Monk's fault, because, even though autism had a clinical description by 1980, is was not widely discussed before the 2000's, a decade after he had written Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Wittgenstein clearly had the symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder. He engaged in highly repetitive behavior, such as only eating certain foods. His confused sexuality can also be a symptom of autism. One of the hallmarks of autism is an obsession with rules, which would explain how Wittgenstein became interested in logic in the first place. The giveaway for me, though, is his apparent inability to fathom how other people think. As I remarked earlier, it seemed unusual that he produced very little written work, and when he did he usually depended on help from other people. This was not because his native language was German and he lived in England: the books for which he is known contain both German and English texts. I think that, like some autistic people, he found it extremely difficult to understand how other people thought, and, for him, writing as if he were like other people was challenging. Thus, he always preferred to go over his ideas informally with others who could insert the correct phraseology, because he didn't know whether what he wrote would be intelligible to people. In my opinion, Monk has used the word "genius" as a broad cover for the fact that there is something about Wittgenstein that he doesn't understand. I'm not going to dwell on this, since I'm currently reading about Russell, not Wittgenstein, but I think it would be possible to write a more insightful biography of Wittgenstein than the one Monk wrote. For someone like me, who doesn't take academic philosophy seriously at this point, nothing is lost by engaging in this kind of demythologizing. I think that in their early days Russell and Wittgenstein were working on the fringes of mathematics, a field that neither needed nor wanted their help. As I said, linking academic philosophy to mathematics was, sociologically speaking, a way to aggrandize philosophy at the time.

In 1924, after his second child, Kate, was born, Russell went on a two-month lecture tour of the U.S. This was arranged by an agent who took a large cut, and the entire purpose was for Russell to make as much money as possible. At the age of fifty-one, he had run through his inheritance, did not have an academic position and, with a family to support, he needed the money. He considered the trip grueling and complained bitterly about it in his letters to Dora. One of the comments that I found interesting was this:

I like the academic audiences best. I always get on with the students. The open forums are rather admirable; they always have very lively questions & discussions afterwards, & they are gradually teaching Yanks to keep their tempers when they hear opinions they don't agree with. But the women's clubs are utterly horrible. I doubt if the human race produces anything more repulsive than the American rich woman of middle age, very fat, very ugly, very expensively dressed, telling you that the pearls that she is wearing are imitation, the real ones being at the Bank on account of recent robberies, boasting that her most intimate friend married a Serbian prince, & at intervals maintaining that pure American womanhood does wonders for morals. If I ever come again, I shall tell Feakins to charge the women's clubs extra.

So, for all his character flaws, Russell can still be quite entertaining.

Transcendence: How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty and Time II

 The "Beauty" section describes how humans, unlike other species, came to value and use objects that had no immediate practical use. This occurred in cultural contexts, and what counted as beautiful could vary from one tribe to another. The origin of beauty is probably associated with mate selection, where symmetrical faces are indicative of genetic health. Sabine Hossenfelder, the author of Lost in Math, could benefit from reading this part, which shows how even physicists may be influenced by cultural biases. Vince is stretching the term considerably to include many of the cultural influences that affect how people behave. She weaves beauty in with the development of trade and travel over thousands of years. When the Yamnaya migrated out of western Asia 5,500 years ago on horses and carts, they set the stage for what were to become trade routes. The kinds of things that were traded, such as silk and jewelry, were not essential and indicate that the prestige that we associate with aesthetic objects is fundamental to being human. She notes that even Columbus, much later, was primarily seeking a new route to the Indies in order to procure spices – hardly a critical commodity. Trade routes established contact between distant societies and facilitated the dissemination of knowledge worldwide. Specifically, Vince emphasizes the importance of the cities that appeared on trade routes and became central to the advancement of knowledge.

Hunter-gatherer groups are generally thought to have been more egalitarian than we are today. This was because men and women contributed equally to the food supply. Women were not as tied down by child-rearing as they are now, because other women shared the task. Although hunter-gatherers were violent like us, with small groups and set lifestyles there was no particular reason for men to take dominant roles. This all changed with the introduction of farming about 10,000 years ago, as discussed in The 10,000 Year Explosion. Men became the primary procurers of food, and agricultural communities created laws, private property and administration, which had previously been unnecessary. In this vein, though the book was published in 2019, Vince gets in some jabs at Donald Trump, possibly the apotheosis of stupid male aggression.

In Vince's view, the progress of civilization resulted primarily from cross-cultural fertilization, especially when people from a variety of locations became concentrated in cities. Her thesis is that the main importance of language is in its passing of knowledge from one person to another, which permits information to proliferate, as if it were a cultural version of genes. She likes to point out that innovation is actually quite rare, and that most of the development of civilization is based on copying. I think that this is true, and though she doesn't use this example, I am often amused by the arrogance of American exceptionalists. When I was growing up, Americans made fun of "rice burners" from Toyota. Now Toyota is almost twice as large as GM and Ford combined. In other words, most of the skills in one part of the world can easily be replicated elsewhere under the right conditions. Though it may not occur, there is no inherent reason why China couldn't surpass the U.S. economically in the next few years.

Vince's views on different ethnicities are fairly conventional. She embraces the popular idea that, since all humans are closely related, they're not all that different. This is generally true, but, though she recognizes that divergences occur, I don't think that she would concede, for example, that Ashkenazi Jews possess certain intellectual skills that other ethnic groups do not. In her discussion of genes and culture, she leans toward the more politically correct side that emphasizes culture more than genes as the deciding factor in which group prevails in specific circumstances.

The final section, "Time," reviews our understanding of time, and how it developed. I didn't find it particularly relevant, though I liked hearing about the influence that astronomy has had on the history of ideas. Vince morphs this into a discussion of reason, and she brings up some topics that interest me, such as human cognitive limitations and AI. She does not delve into the questions that come up in the event of the development of superintelligence. Though she does mention the research that I've discussed by Daniel Kahneman, she is somewhat more sanguine than I am about the future prospects for humanity. She correctly notes that religion usually interferes with reason and was responsible for the Dark Age. She mentions some of the avenues by which humans may significantly increase their longevity. In the end, she seems to cop out a little by comparing humans to superorganisms, such as slime molds. This might appeal to some of her more scientific readers, but to me it begs the main question: what is the future of mankind? While the ideas of equality and cooperation are central to the book, like most writers, she doesn't provide much of a roadmap. I thought that this was one of the better books that I've read on these subjects, but it was not completely satisfying, because it made no predictions. That may not be undesirable, though, given our inability to predict the future accurately. Vince, apparently, has not read E.O. Wilson, who provides the vocabulary that I prefer in this field. There is no specific mention of group selection, though that concept seems to support her conclusion.

Transcendence: How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty and Time I

In order to take a break from Bertrand Russell, I decided to read this short book by Gaia Vince, who is a science journalist. I have been avoiding books by Yuval Noah Harari, such as Sapiens: A Brief History of Tomorrow, because, according to reviews I've read, they contain errors. Harari is a historian, and apparently he has delved into areas in which he has no particular expertise. Vince, on the other hand, is a science writer, and she seems to have a good grasp of the relevant research. I've so far read three of the five sections and find them to be informative and well-written. This is one of my favorite subjects, and I am always surprised to see how little people are interested in it, because it explains both how we came into existence and who we are now. There is no way to acquire a good understanding of human nature without familiarizing yourself with this research, yet many people seem to prefer living in ignorance. 

The first section, "Genesis," briefly describes the physics of the formation of the solar system, the atoms and molecules that were present, and the early evolution of the planet. It becomes apparent that a series of chance events, such as the asteroid collision that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, were necessary for us to reach our current position in the world. The next section, "Fire," discusses the emergence of the first hominid species on the savannas of Africa and the complex interplay between the environment, genetic mutations and culture. The most important change then was the movement from a primarily vegetarian diet to a mixed diet that included meat. This was first made possible by wildfires on the savannas, which killed animals and made them available to eat. When cooking was invented, plant foods were broadened, providing, with meat, greater nutrition from the environment. Some plants that had been inedible became edible through cooking. Improved nutrition is what precipitated hominid divergence from other primates. For most mammals, brain size is limited by nutrition, because large brains like ours require more energy than most animals can afford, given the amount of energy necessary to find and digest food, escape predators, etc. 

Once the diet of our ancestors changed with cooking, other characteristics of modern humans began to emerge. Our brains continued to increase in size, making it necessary to walk upright in order to balance them. Childbirth and childrearing became increasingly problematic, with babies whose heads were too large to fit through their mothers' birth canals and birth at a period far from maturity. In many species, babies are born almost mature, and their mothers soon become unnecessary for their survival, but human children take years to become independent. The difficulties associated with childbirth probably made women instinctively cooperative with other women, because it became necessary for their survival and the survival of their children. Alloparenting became the norm for humans.

The section, "Language," describes how the size of the brain continued to increase when language came into existence. Vince says that hunter-gatherers were multilingual and would change languages according to the territory they were in. Language itself causes increases in brain size, and the more languages you know the larger your brain has to be. The use of language made it easier to expand knowledge, and stories became the medium for storing that knowledge. Our early ancestors were awake far longer each day than other mammals, and they used the extra time to tell stories around a fire in the evening.

As with many books that I read, I like to compare the ideas with actual experiences that I've had in my life. I have noticed that women are more innately cooperative than men. Whereas men tend to be solitary and engage other men in competitive activities such as business or sports, women tend to be more practical and are constantly trying to expand their networks of female friends, which they instinctively know they may need at some point. At this stage in my life, I find that all of my male friendships have been superficial and transitory. In old age, all of the men I know have limited social lives, except for the ones presented to them by women. Women continue to establish social networks with other women throughout their lives. This situation actually mimics other eusocial species, in which the role of males is minute and colonies are controlled by females. It isn't hard to see that males often rise to power through aggression alone and frequently have very little to offer to society as a whole. In a political context, you can see just how incompetent male leaders such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Nicolás Maduro and Rodrigo Duterte compare to competent female leaders such as Angela Merkel, or, in the U.S., Gretchen Whitmer. To be sure, some men are effective leaders and some women aren't, but I think that an incompetent leader is more likely to be male than female.

I've also been thinking about language as it applies to me. I am not much of a linguist, and my attempts in school to learn French, Spanish and Homeric Greek met with limited success. I feel that it took me a long time to become proficient in English. Rather than being multilingual, I even disliked learning American English when I moved here from England. My family continued so speak with English accents at home, and I always experienced cognitive dissonance when I used English pronunciations rather than American pronunciations. According to Vince, multilingualism stresses the brain, and those who know multiple languages have to actively suppress other languages when speaking in one. I think that it would have been easier for me to learn other languages if I had grown up hearing them, but I didn't.

There are two more sections left in the book, and I should finish up on my next post.

Diary

My life, which is generally dull to begin with, has been extremely dull due to the pandemic, so I haven't felt inclined to make a "Diary" post. Of course, I'm still thinking about Donald Trump and the circumstances that permitted him to become president. Actually, it is not a great surprise, because, as I've been saying, the democracy-plus-capitalism formula is dangerous and hasn't been working for decades. For at least fifty years, wealthy people have been controlling who gets elected to Congress and, to a lesser extent, the presidency. Now, media companies such as Fox News are directly influencing voters even in non-election years, and they have paved the way for completely unqualified, incompetent and corrupt political candidates such as Donald Trump; the emphasis has changed from placing people in Congress who will protect corporate interests and keep taxes low to directly increasing corporate profits by drawing more viewers to programs. The only thing that is surprising about Donald Trump's presidency is how uncritical the public has been and the extent of its tolerance of his behavior, even as it results in a high unemployment rate and thousands of preventable deaths. To be sure, the pandemic is not entirely Trump's fault, but the fact is that he made a bad call on it at the beginning and never changed course. Even today he is obstructing congressional action and playing golf, yet he still has millions of enthusiastic supporters. Public stupidity in an age of ubiquitous media propaganda remains a threat to civilization.

Fortunately, I live in a state where Trump is unpopular, and I've been thinking that this fact may be related to the fact that Vermont has the lowest rate of COVID-19 cases of any state. The governor, Phil Scott, who happens to be a Republican, has done a very good job, but it probably helps that most of the residents are sensible enough to ignore Trump's rhetoric. Vermont may have done the best because it's less industrialized than other states, and the level of complaints about a lack of jobs is much lower here than elsewhere, making it more difficult for political opportunists to gain traction. Trump never established credibility here, so fewer people were susceptible to his propaganda. Another advantage that Vermont has may be that the population has a higher percentage of introverts than other states. Since introverts don't need to socialize as much as extroverts, they are less avoidant of isolation and therefore less likely to be exposed to COVID-19. In fact, this thought led me to the idea that introversion may be an evolutionary adaptation that allowed our ancestors to avoid infections in the pandemics that have occurred over the centuries. I think that introversion is inherited, and that eventually the genes for it may be identified.

For an update on William, he is now fully acclimated to his cat door in the basement. This had stopped his damage to the porch screens while chasing mice and allows us to sleep without the interruption of his pawing at the bedroom door in the middle of the night. On the downside, most of the animal carcasses are now appearing on the basement floor instead of on the porch. Sometimes the prey escapes in the basement, but the mice and voles usually run right into a trap, and I release them outside during the day. William is a very picky eater, and he never eats the voles, so I often find an intact dead vole on the basement floor in the morning. He definitely likes mice, but is messy about how he eats them, so I still have mouse parts to clean up from the basement floor in the morning. Often there are mouse organs on the mat at the foot of the basement stairs. I have been thinking about what Jared Diamond said about cats killing songbirds. In William's case, because he is nocturnal, he hardly ever catches birds. I don't know exactly how many rodents he catches a year, but it is probably in the 500-to-1000 range. I wonder whether animal rights activists are as defensive of rodent rights as of songbird rights: they're probably guilty of speciesism. The basement is unheated, and gets down to about 48 degrees during the winter, so sometimes William prefers to be upstairs. During the day in the winter he usually sleeps upstairs near the fire.

The stargazing conditions were poor once again during 2020, and I spent less time on it than most years. My main hobby became investing again, and this was my best year since 2009. I think these circumstances – with millions of people suffering while a few people become wealthier and live in comfort – are yet another example of the failure of human self-governance. So far, the pandemic has had little effect on us or any family members, which includes both coasts. With any luck, vaccines will be more widely available soon. I have mixed feelings about the Republican family of my Democratic friend who lives in Missouri. I got a Trumpish treatment from them when I visited there in 2019, and, though I don't wish them ill, if they were to contract the coronavirus I wouldn't be surprised or sad.

We're getting off to another global warming winter. We've already had two significant snows that have completely melted. Fortunately, global warming causes erratic weather patterns, so we will probably still have frigid winters, but less often.

Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 XII

When Russell left prison in 1919, the war was about to end, and he began to rethink his future. His physical relationship with Ottoline Morrell was over. Vivien Eliot had become friendly with Ottoline and they had probably compared notes: she seems to have lost interest in him. That left him with Colette. He was getting old and wanted children, whereas Colette did not want children or to get married. To complicate matters, Colette became pregnant by her other boyfriend, and she got an abortion with financial assistance from Russell. He was contacted by Dora Black, an Oxford graduate whom he had met in 1917. She was then a graduate student studying French literature but was tired of university life and wanted to leave it. Dora quickly became a contender for Russell's attention, because she wanted to have a baby and preferred to remain unmarried. She was attracted to Russell because of his political activism, and she was more or less a radical bohemian at the time. 

In 1919, Russell also heard from Wittgenstein, whom he had thought was dead. Wittgenstein had been fighting in the Austro-Hungarian army and was being held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Monte Cassino, Italy. He had written what was to become the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and wanted to discuss it and receive help in getting it published. They did eventually meet, and Russell wrote an introduction, which helped influence publishers, since the text was essentially unintelligible and Wittgenstein had no name recognition. However, as always, Wittgenstein was argumentative and thought that the introduction didn't explain the book accurately. Nevertheless, the book was published with Russell's introduction. As an aside, I must say that I am finding both Russell and Wittgenstein to be of far less importance as thinkers than they thought of themselves. In his academic work, Russell was constantly changing his ideas, and the entire field of mathematical logic is an obscure one that is of little interest to most people. Although Wittgenstein was highly intelligent and his writing seemed important, he was not actually an effective communicator, and, later on, he was treated as a savant who usually required an interpreter. Between the two of them, I feel that they missed the boat entirely, because I think that language, which includes the symbolic notations used in mathematics and logic, is best seen as a product of evolution. For billions of years, organisms have been implicitly connecting events in their environments in a manner that increases their chances of survival. Birds make noises that other birds recognize and respond to. A specific noise might mean "A predator is approaching" or "Stay away from my nest." Humans possess the same gene as songbirds and evolved in a manner that allowed them to produce far more complex languages, but the origins of human languages are not fundamentally different from those found in other species. This is not an area that I have spent any time studying, but I think that it is far more productive to explore it from a biological standpoint than from an arcane logical standpoint. If there is any depth to language, it stems ultimately from the evolutionary advantages that it conferred upon its users. Russell and Wittgenstein, at least in their early years, seemed to think that there was some sort of strange, mystical connection between language and reality. There isn't.

In any case, by 1919 Russell was moving away from academic philosophy and becoming prominent as a public intellectual. Although he still retained an urge to produce high-caliber academic works, he felt more comfortable living the journalist's life. He was good at taking an article which he had written for one publication and revising it for other publications or lectures, and through this process he was not only able generate greater income than he could as an academic, but could also increase his public stature and influence. After the war, his friend, G.H. Hardy, the mathematician, arranged for him to receive a lectureship at Trinity College, but Russell chose not to take it that year. In 1920, he joined a British delegation to visit the newly-formed Soviet Union, during which he toured the country and met the leaders, including Trotsky and Lenin. He was completely unimpressed by Lenin, and perhaps the only person he met whom he liked was Maxim Gorky, the writer. He found the Soviet mindset and the industrialized nature of its society, which emphasized conformity and uniformity, completely abhorrent. 

Later in 1920, he traveled to China to lecture in Beijing. By then, he had reached an agreement with Dora Black that she would accompany him, and that they would have sex without contraception; if she became pregnant, when they returned to the U.K. he would divorce Alys and marry Dora. Both Russell and Dora were enchanted by China, and Russell thought of it as a pre-industrial society that contained far more refinement than the Soviet Union. His only complaint was that, as a society, those who faced unfortunate circumstances were simply ignored. He was a popular lecturer, and one attendee was a young Mao Zedong, who wrote about it to a friend. This trip was more inspiring than his trip to the Soviet Union, and the only negative aspect of it was that he became infected with influenza and nearly died. He was bedridden in China for some time and, after a few days in Japan, they returned to England, arriving in August, 1921.

Dora was then five months pregnant, and this caused Russell to break off with Colette and divorce Alys. Russell and Dora's son, named John Conrad Russell, was born on November 16, and Joseph Conrad became his godfather. This brings to a close the "solitude" period of Russell's life, at least as Ray Monk sees it, and another volume is devoted to the remainder of his life. 

I have found this book satisfying in ways that I didn't expect. The discussion is so fine-grained, with the use of multiple sources, that you almost feel as if you were there. Also, as I have experienced with other good biographies, the subject of the biography becomes demythologized in a manner that I find informative. It became apparent to me that Wittgenstein would probably never have had a career as a philosopher if Russell hadn't taken an interest in him and put up with his tantrums. My only complaint is that reading this book carefully has been extremely time-consuming, and I will be reading other things before starting on the second volume.