#philosophy
Opinions in Philosophy.
“I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions in philosophy and, in so far as this is true, the dictionary will enable readers to find it out. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions.
What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science.
Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.
But the kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds.
I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed.“
– Bertrand Russell,
Preface to The Bertrand Russell Dictionary of Mind,
Matter and Morals (1952).
