Willard Van Orman Quine

American philosopher and logician (1900-2000) · United States · Academics · Lived 1908 to 2000 · aged 92

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He dismantled the analytic-synthetic distinction that had propped up logical positivism, argued that philosophy is just the abstract end of empirical science, and left behind "To be is to be the value of a variable" - a line that still defines what it means to say something exists.

Academics Academic Mathematics Philosophy United States Americas 20th Century

A life in dates

2000Died25 December 20001996Kyoto Prize in Arts and PhilosophyAward1993Rolf Schock PrizesAward1979Honorary Doctor of Harvard UniversityAward1971Carus LecturesAward1970“Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.”In their wordsPhilosophy of Logic (1970)Read the whole statement

1960“A fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news.”In their wordsA mocking title for the 'protocol language' imagined by some of the logical positivists, in Word and Object (1960), section 1Read the whole statement

1953“How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies?”In their words"On What There Is"Read the whole statement

“Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.”In their words"On What There Is", p. 4. a humorous comment on the idea "unactualized possible".Read the whole statement

“The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.”In their words"Two dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26Read the whole statement

“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.”In their words"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26Read the whole statement

1908Born25 June 1908

Also in Deutsch

Photos 2

Willard Van Orman Quine on Bluenose II in Halifax NS harbor 1980

Willard Van Orman Quine 1935

In their own words 10

Willard Van Orman Quine

10 statements, newest first

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.
1970, Philosophy of Logic (1970), Own words
Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.
1969, "Natural Kinds", in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969), p. 126; originally written for a festschrift for Carl Gustav Hempel,, Own words
A fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news.
1960, A mocking title for the 'protocol language' imagined by some of the logical positivists, in Word and Object (1960), section 1, Own words

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Awards

Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy1996

Rolf Schock Prizes1993

Honorary Doctor of Harvard University1979

Carus Lectures1971

Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

In their orbit

Child: Douglas Boynton Quine

About this person

Willard Van Orman Quine held Harvard's Edgar Pierce Chair from 1956 to 1978, teaching logic and set theory while insisting first-order logic was the only kind that mattered. In 1951 his paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" attacked reductionism and the analytic-synthetic divide, pulling the rug from under logical positivism and replacing it with semantic holism. With Hilary Putnam he built the indispensability argument for mathematical realism; alone he developed New Foundations, his own set theory, and pushed a naturalized epistemology that treated knowledge as science explaining itself. Word and Object in 1960 introduced the indeterminacy of translation - the claim that meaning is radically underdetermined by behavior - and cemented his view that philosophy and science are continuous. He died on Christmas Day 2000, having spent five decades reshaping how analytic philosophy understands reference, meaning, and what counts as real.

Country

United States

In common with Willard

John DeweyBoth received Carus Lectures

George Herbert MeadBoth received Carus Lectures Paul GriceBoth received Carus Lectures

Dana ScottBoth received Rolf Schock Prizes Carl Gustav HempelBoth received Carus Lectures

Academics from the United States 1

William James Sidis60.2

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