“Please let me know whether it seems to you absurd or ridiculous to bring in necessity and contingency”. Dorothy Wrinch and Bertrand Russell on the role of logic in our knowledge of the external world

In this paper, we will discuss Wrinch’s reflections on logic at the intersection among logic, epistemology and metaphysics. We will see, first, how Wrinch was a Russellian philosopher and scientist, as she explicitly believed in Russell’s logical-analytic method and in the “all-important” role Russell saw for logic in our knowledge of the external world. Second, we will see how Wrinch’s reflections also show us that, in 1918, one could endorse the Russellian overarching project as presented in Our Knowledge of the External World while holding that logic can provide us with kinds of pieces of knowledge of the external world that go beyond those Russell was happy to admit.