There is not any superfine brand of knowledge, obtainable by the philosopher, which can give us a standpoint from which to criticize the whole of the knowledge of daily life. The most that can be done is to examine and purify our common knowledge by an internal scrutiny, assuming the canons by which it has been obtained, and applying them with more care and with more precision. Philosophy cannot boast of having achieved such a degree of certainty that it can have authority to condemn the facts of experience and the laws of science. The philosophic scrutiny, therefore, though sceptic in regard to every detail, is not sceptical as regards the whole. That is to say, its criticism of details w only be based upon their relation to other details, not upon some external criterion which can be applied to all the details equally.
Russell, 1914, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientiļ¬c Method in Philosophy, pp. 73-74
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