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Quine's Naturalism
Willard Van Quine was born 1908 and died in the year 2000. He worked in theoretical philosophy and in logic. Quine’s philosophical thought is consistent throughout the course of his life. There are developments, of course, but outright changes of mind are relatively rare and mostly on relatively minor points to which he calls “naturalism” is fundamental, is self-conscious, and explicit from the start. -
Quine 1930's and 1940's
In the 1930s and 1940s, many scientifically-oriented philosophers tended to assume some form of Logical Empiricism. Quine's fundamental idea of Logical Empiricism is that there is a distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths. After Quine’s work of the early 1950s, philosophers, even those who did not accept his detailed arguments could no longer be disregard logical empiricism as correct. This was a very major change among scientifically-oriented philosophers.