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Mathematics B.A.
Quine attended Oberlin College in Ohio until 1930 where he received a B.A. in Mathematics with honors reading in mathematical philosophy. -
Philosophy PhD
Quine attended Harvard University on scholarship where he completed his PhD. In Philosophy. -
The Fellowship of The Ri.... Quine
Traveled on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship where he met and was influenced by members of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists to include Rudolf Carnap. Although influenced Quine disagreed with their doctrine of analytic-synthetic distinction but more aligned with empiricism and naturalism. -
Joining a Club
He became a Junior Fellow in Harvard’s new, at the time, Society of Fellows and worked on logic and set theory. -
A System of Logistic
His dissertation from Oberlin was on Whitehead and Russel’s Principia Mathematica which was revised and published by Harvard as A System of Logistic. -
Moving Up
Quine became a Faculty Instructor at Harvard and retained that position until 1941 where he became an Associate Professor. -
WWII Puts Philosophy On Hold
From 42-45 Quine served in the U.S. Navy during WWII working in naval intelligence. -
Professor Quine
Quine was promoted to Professor at Harvard and remained there until his retirement in 1978. -
Post War
By the 1950’s Quine had matured his empiricist, naturalistic, and behaviourist views of philosophy and rejected the epistemology of foundationalism. He viewed philosophy as an extension of science and that philosophy was chasing after theoretical and abstract questions in the same manner as empirical science. -
Naturalism
Quines work, and views of naturalism allowed the general speculation and claims about the natural world which highly influenced fields like metaphysics. -
The Death of Quine
W.V. Quine passed away on the 25th of December 2000 in Boston, Massachusetts. His work was influential and has changed the field of philosophy in both the twenty and twenty first century. -
The Ideas of Quine