Full Idea
Relations were regarded with suspicion, until philosophers working in logic and mathematics advanced reasons to doubt that we could provide anything like an adequate description of the world without developing a relational vocabulary.
Gist of Idea
Philosophers of logic and maths insisted that a vocabulary of relations was essential
Source
report of Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], Ch.26) by John Heil - Relations
Book Reference
'Routledge Companion to Metaphysics', ed/tr. Le Poidevin/Simons etc [Routledge 2012], p.312
A Reaction
[Heil cites Russell as the only reference] A little warning light, that philosophers describing the world managed to do without real relations, and it was only for the abstraction of logic and maths that they became essential.