 Formation of the concept and the term “sense data” is standardly attributed to G. E. Moore and Bertrand  Russell.[11]  The background to this development includes not only the problem of the external world but also their early and joint commitment to British Idealism. The affirmation of sense data denied a central tenet of such idealism, that perception yields no knowledge because it is always an incomplete grasping of the whole or the Absolute. As Russell put it, looking back from 1943: