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Life and Influences
Willard Quine was born on June 25, 1908 in Akron, Ohio. Known as Van by his friends, Quine is one of the most influential American Logicians and Philosophers of the twentieth century. Growing up, his father was a manufacturing entrepreneur and his mother was a schoolteacher. -
Academics
In 1930 Quine received his B.A. in mathematics and philosophy from Oberlin College. He then enrolled into Harvard University with a strong interest for their Philosophy program, which was taught by Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead was a philosopher known for his and Bertrand Russel's work on the Principia Mathematica. It was only two years later in 1932 when he obtained his Ph.D in Philosophy from Harvard. -
Becoming a Philosopher
It was around this time when Quine's outstanding writings about ontology, epistemology, and language helped him become a well known philosopher. While traveling in the 1930's-1940's, he discussed analytic and synthetic sentences with Carnap, Nelson Goodman, and Alfred Tarski. He questioned the meaning behind the terms which later he would use to write his famous paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", explaining that analytic truths are true and synthetic is not. -
Life After Receiving His Ph.D
After receiving his Ph.d Quine was invited to the Harvard Junior Fellow. This gave him the opportunity to travel and meet various well known individuals. During World War II he lectured on logic in Brazil as well as Portugal while serving in the Navy working in intelligence. Quine partaked in supervising the Harvard theses of the following; Donald Davidson, David Lewis, Daniel Dennett, Gilbert Harman, Hao Wang, Hugues LeBlanc, and many others. -
Conclusion
December 30, 2000, Willard Van Orman Quine passed away. His work in different fields of philosophy has affected logic in a positive way and help it grow everyday. His decades worth of work on the analytic and synthetic distinction was a big step for philosophy and well worth the debates and analyzations. -
Youtube Video
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Citations
“Willard Van Orman Quine.” Willard Van Orman Quine - New World Encyclopedia, web.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine. Willard Van Orman Quine Obituaries (Part 1), www.wvquine.org/wvq- obit.html. Sinclair, Robert. “Willard Van Orman Quine: Philosophy of Science.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/quine-sc/.