ABSTRACT
Wittgenstein came to Cambridge in 1911 to study with Bertrand Russell. In the course of the war there was no further contact between the two. Near the end of the war, early in 1918, Russell delivered a series of eight lectures in London which, Russell said: are very largely concerned with explaining certain ideas which he learnt from Wittgenstein. While Wittgenstein asserts that philosophy can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigations, one could just as well reverse the assertion and claim that scientific investigations can neither confirm nor confute philosophical positions. There are two possible aspects to the charge of scientism: a conceptual aspect about what role science can play relative to our humanistic understanding, and a normative aspect about what role science should play relative to our humanistic understanding. The difference between Russell and Wittgenstein over the relationship between philosophy and science was left unresolved due to the intervention of the Great War.
