Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell

Pérez-Jara and Camprubí have created a strikingly new and persuasive framework for understanding Bertrand Russell as a public figure. They show how the rhetoric of this seemingly most rational of philosophers was deeply affected by "primitive" experiences of social trauma and saturated by simplistic binaries about evil and apocalypse. The influence of public intellectuals, they demonstrate, comes less from the quality of their thought than the power of their cultural performances. Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell sets a new standard for understanding the public life of intellectuals. -- Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University
This is a fascinating sociological account of one of the main figures of analytical philosophy and one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Anyone interested in Bertrand Russel’s rich intellectual life must read this book, but it is also particularly interesting for its deft use of cultural sociology and positioning theory. -- Patrick Baert, Cambridge University
In this innovative new study, Pérez-Jara and Camprubí provide a powerful cultural sociological analysis of one of the 20th Century’s most iconic public intellectuals. The book focuses not so much on Russell as an academic philosopher, but more on his evolving eschatological concern with how science and technology promise to pave the way to both paradise and hell. Through careful reconstruction and theoretical nous, the authors reveal how Russell attempted to forge a public morality that would help avoid humanity’s drift toward apocalypse. This book is a significant contribution to Russell studies and is essential reading for historians of philosophy, as well as cultural sociologists and sociologists of ideas and intellectuals. -- Marcus Morgan, University of Bristol