Willard V. Quine
Harvard University
June 25, 1908 - December 25, 2000
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Scientific Discipline: Social and Political Sciences Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 1977)
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Willard Quine was a leader in mathematical logic, symbolic logic, and the philosophy of language. He refined Whitehead-Russel theory types in his paper, “New Foundations of Mathematical Logic.” Quine’s Mathematical Logic, published in 1940, was one of the earliest attempts at a complete formalization of mathematics. In 1951, his widely acclaimed “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” argued against the philosophical idea of having varieties of truth; it was believed that there were analytic truths (ones deduced by reason) and synthetic truths (ones deduced by experience). Quine also proposed the correlation that how people talked about the external world determined how they viewed it, which became a highly debated topic in philosophy. His other major contribution was his work with set theory, which he used to analyze philosophical propositions.
Quine went to Oberlin College and earned his A.B. degree in 1929. He then attended Harvard University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1932. Four years later, he became an instructor of philosophy at Harvard. He was appointed professor of philosophy in 1948, served as chairman of the department from 1952 to 1953, and became the Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy in 1956, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. Quine was a member of the Association for Symbolic Logic (president from 1953 to 1955), the American Philosophical Society, the American Philosophical Association (president of the Eastern Division in 1957), and the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. In 1970, he was awarded the N.M. Butler Gold Medal.
