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Birth
W. V. Quine was born in Akron, Ohio to his father, a manufacturing engineer, and his mother, a school teacher (Follesdal, 2). -
College
Quine entered Oberlin College in 1926 (Orenstein, 3) Quine acquired his B.A. in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1930 and then received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1932 from Harvard (Follesdal, 2). -
World War II
During WWII, Quine served the U.S. Navy in an intelligence role breaking German submarine code. Through which, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander (Orenstein, 8). -
Two Dogmas of Empiricism
Published in 1951 (Orenstein, 7). This paper can be seen as the most influential paper of twentieth-century philosophy (Godfrey, 31). Quine called for a holistic theory of testing arguing that one must look at the larger whole to understand a particular thing. The thought is that when one is testing a single idea, they are actually testing a long conjunction of statements. If a test results in failure, it may be that one of the items in the conjunction or network of ideas is wrong (Godfrey, 32). -
Epistemology Naturalized
Appearing in 1971 (Orenstein, 8), Quine's paper "Epistemology Naturalized" is often thought to be the beginning of modern naturalism (Godfrey, 150). He thought that philosophers should not give "foundations" to their scientific knowledge. In a more radical thought, he argued that epistemological questions are so closely related to psychology, that psychology should absorb epistemology altogether (Godfrey, 151). -
Death
At age 92, W. V. Quine died in Boston, Massachusetts (Lambert). -
Contribution to Philosophy of Science
Willard Van Orman Quine can be argued to be the most influential philosopher on the latter half of the twentieth-century (Orenstien, 1). He sought to unify philosophy and natural science and his holistic empiricism changed the philosophy of science (Orenstein). -
Video on Quine & Ontology
Watch this short video to learn more about Quine's views on Ontology!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhHIVEN839s -
Reference
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. "Theory and Reality : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science". University of Chicago Press, 2003. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=nlebk&AN=324622&site=ehost-live&scope=site. -
Reference
Lambert, K. (2001). "In memoriam: Willard van orman quine". Erkenntnis, 54(3), 273-276. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy1.apus.edu/10.1023/A:1010620609858 -
Reference
Orenstein, Alex. "W. V. O. Quine", Routledge, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=3060909. Accessed 06 April 2019 -
Reference
FØLLESDAL, DAGFINN. “Willard Van Orman Quine.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 156, no. 1, Mar. 2012, pp. 99–104. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=i3h&AN=86229367&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 06April2019