|
We note with sadness the recent passing of three very good friends of the Bertrand Russell Society: Omar Rumi in Kuala Lumpur, Paul Edwards in New York City, and Conrad Russell in London. Omar Rumi, earlier known as Ralph Gainey, a frequent and welcome contributor to the online Bertrand Russell discussion group russell-l, died of a heart attack on October 6, 2004 in Kuala Lumpur, where he lived in retirement. He was 67 years old. Omar stood out in the Russell discussion group as reasonable, skeptical and open-minded, always willing to examine the rationale for any claim until a clear and satisfactory understanding of it had been reached. He was a true Russellian. He is survived by his wife, Somsiah Parman, and his five year old son, Latyn Gainey. Omar is said to be buried in a grove of trees on a hill overlooking a valley. He is missed on the Russell list. Dr. Paul Edwards, editor of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and honorary member of the Bertrand Russell Society, died in his Manhattan home early in the morning of December 9, 2004. He was 81 years old. With nearly 1,500 entries by over 500 contributors, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, published in 1967 by Macmillan, is one of the monumental works of twentieth century philosophy. Published when analytic philosophy was at its peak, it exhibits all the robust muscularity of a great work created at the highpoint of a movement. Edwards’ editing, especially his famous intolerance of “confused thinking”, contributed much to the power of the work. The greatness of the Encyclopedia became especially apparent after 1998, Routledge published its own Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The only good way to judge an encyclopedia or dictionary is by comparing its entries with those of a competitor. (Try this for yourself next time you go to Borders to buy a translating dictionary and you will see what I mean.) Though the Routledge Encyclopedia is a larger work (10 volumes instead of 8; 2000 entries instead of 1500) on which a great deal of money was spent, and though it sold at a magisterial price ($3,775.00), it soon became clear, after one compared a few dozen entries in the two encyclopedias, that despite all its efforts to replace Edwards’ Macmillan Encyclopedia, the Routledge Encyclopedia is an ordinary work and the Edwards’ Encyclopedia is not. The Routledge Encyclopedia simply had the effect of increasing the appreciation of Edwards’ Encyclopedia among philosophers. Dr. Edwards was a critic of religion, and as well as editing the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he wrote several entries related to religion for it, including ‘Atheism’, ‘Atheismusstreit’, ‘Common Consent Arguments for the Existence of God’, ‘Why’, parts of the entry on Russell, and, most intriguingly, an entry entitled ‘My Death’. In that last essay, Edwards examined the common view that one cannot imagine or conceive of one’s own death though one can imagine and conceive of the death of others, and after careful analysis found the idea “confused” and wanting. He concluded: It seems quite plain that human beings not infrequently imagine and conceive of their own deaths without the least difficulty, as, for example, when they take out life insurance or when they admonish themselves to drive more carefully. Nor is it at all difficult to explain what a person imagines when he thinks of his own death. “When I die,” wrote Bertrand Russell in a famous passage (in What I Believe), “I shall rot and nothing of my ego will survive”; and it is surely this that people wish to avoid or put off. A person thinking of his own death is thinking of the destruction or disintegration of his body and the cessation of his experiences. As well as editing The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edwards was the author of several books, including Reincarnation: A Critical Examination, The Logic of Moral Discourse, Heidegger’s Confusions, and numerous articles. Additionally, he is responsible for having collected a number of Russell’s writings on religion and publishing them under the title Why I Am Not a Christian. In so doing, he changed the lives of thousands of people around the world, including the lives of many in the BRS. Born in Vienna on September 2, 1923 to Jewish parents, Edwards’ family fled to Australia with Hitler’s rise to power. Edwards received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Melbourne, and then moved to Manhattan and received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1951. He was a professor at New York University in the 1960s and Brooklyn College from 1966 to 1986, and lecturer at the New School for Social Research from the 1960s to the late 1990s. He also taught at the University of Melbourne, Columbia University, City College of New York, and the University of California, Berkeley. Conrad Russell, son of Bertrand Russell and Patricia Spence, and great grandson of Lord John Russell, Liberal Prime Minister of England 1846-52 and 1865-66, died on October 10, 2004 at the age of 67. He had been ill for some time. A professor, author, and member of the House of Lords, the fifth Earl Russell published numerous books and was active in politics as a Liberal Democrat leader. His field of study was primarily 17th century English political and parliamentary history. His publications include The Crisis of Parliaments: English History 1509 – 1660 (1971), The Causes of the English Civil War (1990), and The Fall of the British Monarchies (1991). As a revisionist historian of the English civil war, he tended to be skeptical of accounts that explained the civil war in terms of grand sweeping forces. Conrad Russell is survived by his sons Nicholas and John Russell. |