Russell came mainly from the tradition of empiricist thought and he believed that mathematics and logic were connected. He also felt that logic could be applied to all areas of life, including philosophy. So, along with his friend G. E. Moore, Russell began to analyze philosophical arguments, including those concerning God and free will. Using logic, they showed that many of the arguments philosophers had made were invalid. This method was called the analysis of logical forms. Then, other philosophers started analyzing logical forms themselves. Soon, there were lots of different ways to analyze logical forms. Analyzing philosophical arguments using logic became known as analytic philosophy and is still done today.
Analytic philosophy emerged from Frege’s “logical syntax” and Russell’s “principles of reasoning”. Logical positivism arose from Quine’s attempts to apply the methodology of science to philosophy, and Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language. Analytic philosophers included Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Alfred Tarski, Rudolf Carnap, Gottlob Frege, and John Maynard Keynes. The term “analytical philosophy”, however, is sometimes applied to any kind of philosophical method that seeks to analyze or reduce complex ideas down to simpler principles.
