ABSTRACT
Logical atomism is the view that the world consists of simple facts, each of them independent of all the rest. It is a view to which logical positivism, and indeed the philosophy of analysis generally, has tended from the first. To be sure, it is a metaphysical theory, and logical empiricists, who eschew metaphysics, might be expected to reject it. Many of them have done so. Others, like Wittgenstein, have admitted that on their assumptions it is nonsense, but have held it to be ‘important nonsense’. Others still, like Russell, have thought that while most metaphysics is nonsense, this is not. Why is it that this type of philosophy, which is not particularly plausible on the surface, has held so strong an attraction for the analysts? The reason, I think, is that it is the philosophy upon which the two strongest trends in logical empiricism converge. These, intelligibly enough, are logic and empiricism. We said that, according to atomism, the facts of which the world is composed are at once simple and independent. Their simplicity is demanded by empiricism, for which analysis has always involved the breaking up of wholes into the simplest sensible parts. Their independence is the demand of the particular kind of logic to which analysts generally have been inclined, the logic of Principia Mathematica. It will repay us to examine these two demands separately. We shall begin from the empiricist side.
