Home > Author > Willard Van Orman Quine
1 " Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine
2 " Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as are the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference. "
3 " Life is agid, life is fulgid. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time. "
4 " Believing is a disposition. We could tire ourselves out thinking, if we put our minds to it, but believing takes no toll. "
5 " Language is a social art. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine , Word and Object
6 " As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine ,
7 " Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives. "
8 " No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives. "
9 " It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine , Theories and Things
10 " To be is to be the value of a variable. "
11 " Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption. "
12 " Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine , Ontological Relativity and Other Essays
13 " Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine , Set Theory and Its Logic
14 " Nonsense is indeed mere absence of sense, and can always be remedied by arbitrarily assigning some sense. "
15 " And so come the cults, claiming to meet the needs that science has thus far failed to meet--and offering the prospective inductee a place on the ground floor. Some cults may be harmless enough, but whenever false doctrine is propagated there is some cost. Many such doctrines are dressed up as science in their own right. For even though established science may be distrusted, "science" is still a thumps-up word for most people. So we find many of these theories borrowing liberally from genuine science, and many more using terms that sound, to the uninitiated, like the stuff of which true science is made. Now many of the bogus doctrines are actually unintelligible; their seeming content simply vanishes when closely scrutinized. But given the incomprehensibility of so much genuine science for so many of us, that very unintelligibility can be mistaken as a sign of authenticity. Alas, it can even inspire reverence. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine , The Web of Belief
16 " The Preface states, "This little book is a compact introduction to the study of rational belief. It is meant to afford a coherent view of a broad philosophical terrain, providing points of entry to such areas of philosophy as theory of knowledge, methodology of science, and philosophy of language."Quoting page 8: We will broach many of the criteria by which reasonable belief may be discriminated from unreasonable belief. But not only are the criteria not foolproof; they do not always even point in a unique direction. When we meet the Virtues for assessing hypotheses we will find that they require us to look at candidates for belief in multiple ways, to weigh together a variety of considerations. Decisions in science, as in life, can be difficult. There is no simple touchstone for responsible belief. "
17 " A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put into three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: 'What is there?' It can be answered, moreover, in a word--'Everything'--and everyone will accept this answer as true. "
18 " Life is what the least of us make the most of us feel the least of us make the most of. "
19 " To be is to be the value of a bound variable. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine , Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine
20 " Physics investigates the essential nature of the world, and biology describes a local bump. Psychology, human psychology, describes a bump on the bump. "
