(July 25, 2013 at 8:12 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: I notice you have a thing against higher education, as evidenced by your quote from Bertrand Russell.Try and keep to the topic of the thread. You can take up your personal issues in a new thread.
I actually want to address the signature. You took it out of context, see.
The important thing to remember is that Russell didn't mean this as a general-purpose aphorism.
This comes from Russell's account of historical developments in philosophy, the part where he's describing the theories of Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771).
Helvétius held that differences in intelligence - between genius and stupidity - were entirely down to differences in education (as opposed to differences in inborn capacity). Hence, if someone is stupid, in Helvetius' view, a poor education has made them that way.
Source is from Google Books, The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959: http://books.google.com/books?id=gO1IP81...&q&f=false
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
Bertrand Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Bertrand Russell