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The Beginning
Quine born to father Cloyd R. Quine, an engineer who founded the Akron Equipment Company. Mother, Harriet Van Orman, was a teacher. Willard was the youngest son of the family. His interests at school were mainly scientific but from a young age he began to interest himself with philosophical questions. For example, the concepts of heaven and hell worried him when he was only nine years old. His older brother gave him James's Pragmatism before he had left school and the book fascinated him. -
Education
He graduated from Oberlin College in 1930 and earned his doctorate from Harvard just two years later, one of the fastest in the school’s history. -
His Career Path
Hired in 1936 as an Instructor in Philosophy, promoted to Associate Professor (1941), Professor (1948), Edgar Pierce Professor (1956), and finally Edgar Pierce Professor Emeritus (1978), his career at Harvard University spanned more than 60 years with a 4 year gap during World War II in US Navy Intelligence (Lieutenant then Lieutenant Commander, 1942-1946). Throughout his career, he composed manuscripts by hand and then polished them with scissors, tape, and a portable 1927 Remington typewriter. -
Philosophical View
In 1951 Quine sketched an alternative view on meaning in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." This view was worked out in Word and Object (1960), where Quine also clinched his criticism of the modalities by arguing that quantification into modal contexts leads to a collapse of modal distinctions. -
Contribution to the Scientific Community
Initially Quine worked as a math logician. His first 5 books were devoted to logic. He abandoned that pursuit in 1953 and moved on to the philosophy of language. Quine transitioned to epistemology, which studies the nature of knowledge, a new form of philosophy, which he called naturalized epistemology. He believed epistemology’s only role is to describe the way knowledge is obtained. according to Quine, its function is to describe how present science arrives at the beliefs accepted in science. -
Awards & Distinctions (1993 - 1996)
He had honorary doctorates from numerous universities, was a member of several academies, and received many prizes, including the first Rolf Schock Prize in Stockholm in 1993 and the He had honorary doctorates from numerous universities, was a member of several academies, and received many prizes, including the first Rolf Schock Prize in Stockholm in 1993 and the Kyoto Prize in Tokyo in 1996. -
William V. O. Quine's Legacy
W V O Quine died on Christmas Day. He played a crucial role in shaping philosophy during the 20th century. Early encyclopedias classified him as a logician, but soon came to be regarded as a general philosopher, to begin with a philosopher of logic and language, but eventually as a metaphysician, whose radical thoughts about ontology, epistemology and communication have repercussions within all major areas of philosophy. He had 3 daughters and 1 son, 6 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
