Page:Russell - An outline of philosophy.pdf/31



our scientific knowledge were full and complete, we should understand ourselves and the world and our relation to the world. As it is, our understanding of all three is fragmentary. For the present, it is the third question, that of our relation to the world, that I wish to consider, because this brings us nearest to the problems of philosophy. We shall find that it will lead us back to the other two questions, as to the world and as to ourselves, but that we shall understand both these better if we have considered first how the world acts upon us and how we act upon the world.

There are a number of sciences which deal with Man. We may deal with him in natural history, as one among the animals, having a certain place in evolution, and related to other animals in ascertainable ways. We may deal with him in physiology, as a structure capable of performing certain functions, and reacting to the environment in ways of which some, at least, can be explained by chemistry. We may study him in sociology, as a unit in various organisms, such as the family and the state. And we may study him, in psychology, as he appears to himself. This last gives what we may call an internal view of man, as opposed to the other three, which give an external view. That is to say, in psychology we use data which can only be obtained when the observer and the observed are the same person, whereas in the other ways of studying Man all our data can be obtained by observing other people. There are different ways of interpreting this distinction, and different views of its