Provenance
Source & edition record
This page records where the text came from, what changed in presentation, and what remains unverified.
Bibliographic source
- Work
- Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description
- Author
- Bertrand Russell
- First publication
- Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1911, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 108-128. DOI: 10.1093/aristotelian/11.1.108
- Source edition
- Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959, pp. 209-232
- Accessed
- 2026-08-16
- Verification
- source-compared
- Source snapshot SHA-256
3644c1c3c8d2cb996a72caffbcb9513e2229de66856fe7394544051c98506a29
Transformations
- Removed the Project Gutenberg legal wrapper and the work-specific excluded matter recorded in the source manifest.
- Preserved source wording, spelling, punctuation, order, and plain-text emphasis markers.
- Normalised mechanical whitespace and line wrapping, while preserving diagrams and tables verbatim.
- Added semantic section files, stable routes, source-fragment links, and deterministic anchors.
- Inherited the Project Gutenberg transcription and its documented editorial corrections.
- Converted bracket-number note markers and definitions into stable section-local Markdown footnotes.
- Compared the complete chapter against the exact 1911 first-publication scan; retained the frozen 1959 source-edition wording and recorded substantive earlier readings in the public source record.
- Mapped all thirty stable paragraph anchors to the approved 1911 first-publication pages 108-128 while continuing to identify the rendered wording as the 1959 source edition.
Edition collation
The rendered text follows the frozen 1959 source edition. The exact 1911 first publication was compared in full; genuine earlier readings and two explicitly dated 1917 additions are disclosed here rather than silently merged.
Witnesses
- Proceedings first publication, 1911: Exact first-publication witness, printed pp. 108-128. PDF SHA-256
daae128359a6660373697d0531a2d96b5cab7f01cdbd2e91c1e7fd3636c9e7ee.
Substantive earlier readings
| Location | Earlier witness | Rendered source edition |
|---|---|---|
| 1911 p. 109 | in speaking of presentations | in speaking of presentation |
| 1911 p. 110 | It is, however, very difficult to account for plain facts | It is difficult, but probably not impossible, to account for plain facts |
| 1911 p. 110 | It would seem necessary ... to suppose that I am acquainted with myself | It would seem necessary ... either to suppose that I am acquainted with myself ... or to find some other analysis of self-consciousness |
| 1911 p. 111 | we have also what may be called awareness of universals | we have also (though not quite in the same sense) what may be called awareness of universals |
| 1911 p. 112 | There are thus two sorts of objects | There are thus at least two sorts of objects |
| 1911 p. 112 | the disjunction 'universal-particular' is exhaustive | the disjunction 'universal-particular' includes all objects |
| 1911 p. 114 | an object which is the so-and-so | an object which we know to be the so-and-so |
| 1911 p. 117 | The relation love enters as one of the terms of the relation, not as a relating relation. | Sentence omitted |
| 1911 p. 117 note | Philosophical Essays, 'The Nature of Truth.' | The note adds Russell's Wittgenstein-driven qualification, dated [1917]. |
| After 1911 p. 121 | No note after 'I' and 'this' | A new note excludes 'I' and retains only 'this' as a strict proper name, dated [1917]. |
| 1911 p. 126 | Scott, in the same sense in which 'author' means a certain universal | Scott, in the same sense (so far as concerns our present discussion) in which 'author' means a certain universal |
| 1911 p. 126 | some value of x makes it true | some value of x makes it true, but no other value does |
| 1911 p. 128 | consists of a complex whose constituents are a mind | consists of an occurrence whose constituents are a mind |
| 1911 p. 128 | identity of denotation with diversity of connotation | identity of denotation with diversity of meaning |
Original-page mapping
Paragraph anchors were reconciled to the following scans. The source text remains the frozen edition identified above.
- Proceedings first publication, 1911, pp. 108-128; 30 mapped paragraphs.
Reviewed by OpenAI Codex for Web Editions on 2026-08-16.
Rights status
public-domain. Project Gutenberg records the source edition as public domain in the USA. The article was first published in 1911. This publication decision applies to US availability; readers elsewhere should check local law. Project Gutenberg's licence and trademark terms apply to the frozen source artifact. View the rights record ↗