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Birth
WV Quine was born in Akron, OH -
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Initial education
Quine obtained his B.A. in mathematics with honors from Oberlin College in Ohio. -
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Further Education
Attended Harvard University, earning his P.h.D. in Philosophy. His thesis was published based upon Whitehead and Russel's Principia Mathematica. It was titled "The logic of sequences: A generalization of Principia Mathematica." -
New Foundations of Mathematical Logic
Quine published an article about New Foundations, an axiomatic set theory, simplifying Principia Mathematica. An axiomatic set theory allows for infinite descending membership chains. In 1940 Quine published an extension of the New Foundations, often called Mathematical Logic. -
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Military Service
He served in the U.S. Navy, primarily working in Naval Intelligence during WWII. -
Quine on Ontology
One of the many books he published is titled "On What There Is". He is quoted as saying "A theory is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound variables of the theory must be capable of referring in order that the affirmations made in the theory be true." (Quine, 33).
Attached is a short video of Professor Hilary Putnam discussing Quine and Ontologies relationship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhHIVEN839s -
Philosophical importance
Quine published a paper titled "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" which according to University of Sydney professor Peter Godfrey-Smith is "regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy." The paper is an attack on two portions of the logical positivists' philosophy, the difference between synthetic and analytical truth, and reductionism. -
Death
He died in Boston, MA