W.V Quine Timeline

By carriecrilow

  • W.V Quine Birth Dates

    W.V Quine Birth Dates
    W.V Quine was born on June 25th 1908 in Akron, Ohio.

  • Education

    Education
    Quine graduated with his Bachelor of Mathematics in 1930, and graduated with his Ph.D in Philosophy from Harvard University. During his time at Harvard, Quine played a supervisory role in the graduate theses of several notable individuals, including David Lewis, Gilbert Harman, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Hao Wang, Hugues LeBlanc, Henry Hiz and George Myro. Quine was a fellow at Wesleyan Univ. in 1964-65 and received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala Univ. in 1980.

  • A System of Logistics

    After returning to Harvard in 1933 to start his Junior Fellowship, Quine published his first book titled "A System of Logistics," which was essentially an extension of his doctoral thesis. From then onwards until he took a break from his career for war service, Quine mainly concentrated on research in logic, but the underlying motivation behind his work always remained philosophical.

  • Publication of "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"

    Quine's 1951 paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" criticized the analytic-synthetic distinction and logical positivism's reductionism, arguing for a holistic view of language and meaning. Quine, W. V. "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." The Philosophical Review, vol. 60, no. 1, 1951, pp. 20–43.

  • Naturalized Epistemology

    Naturalized Epistemology
    Quine introduced a novel philosophy that he referred to as naturalized epistemology. He argued that the sole valid purpose of epistemology is to explain how knowledge is actually acquired. According to Quine, its role is to describe the means by which current science attains the convictions that are accepted by the scientific community. Please follow the link below of Quine's video explaining Epistemology's nature.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX9Ys5bL0vI

  • W.V Quine Death

    Quine died at the age of 92 on 25 December 2000 in Boston MA. Before his passing, Quine confided in Morton White that he couldn't recall the name of his illness, whether it was Alzheimer's or Althusser's. However, since he was unable to remember it, he assumed it to be Alzheimer's. Quine ultimately passed away on Christmas Day in 2000 due to the illness.

  • Citations

    St Andrews Mathematics History Project. "Biography of Willard Van Orman Quine." The University of St Andrews, n.d., https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Quine/. No author provided. "Obituary for Willard Van Orman Quine." wvquine.org, n.d., https://www.wvquine.org/wvq-obit4.html.