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Quine, W. V. (Willard Van Orman). W. V. Quine papers: Guide.

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MS Am 2587

Quine, W. V. (Willard Van Orman). W. V. Quine papers: Guide.

Houghton Library, Harvard College Library

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA

© 2008 The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Cataloging partially funded by the Francis P. Scully and Robert G. Scully Class of 1951 Fund.

Last update on 2009 July 15

Descriptive Summary

Quine, W. V. (Willard Van Orman). W. V. Quine papers: Guide.

W. V. Quine Papers (MS Am 2587). Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Historical Note

W. V. (Willard Van Orman) Quine (1908-2000) was an American mathematician, logician, and philosopher, widely considered one of the dominant figures in Anglo-American philosophy in the last half of the 20th century.

Quine was born in Akron, Ohio on June 25, 1908 and attended Oberlin College where he received the B.A. in mathematics in 1930. He came to Harvard University as a graduate student in 1930 and remained affiliated with Harvard for the rest of his life. He completed his Ph.D. under Alfred North Whitehead in 1932 and spent 1932-1933 in Europe as a Sheldon Fellow. In 1933 he was elected to the first group of Junior Fellows of the Harvard Society of Fellows, was an instructor in philosophy from 1936 to 1941, associate professor from 1941-1948, and professor beginning in 1948. In 1956 he became the Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. He married his first wife in 1930, Naomi Clayton Quine, later divorced, and in 1948 married Marjorie Boynton Quine, who died in 1998. Quine died on December 25, 2000 and was survived by four children: Elizabeth Quine Roberts, Norma Quine, Douglas Quine, and Margaret Quine McGovern.

Quine's early research and writing mainly concerned logic; his efforts to simplify Bertrand Russell's theory of types probably led to his most important contribution to mathematical logic and culminated in his 1940 book Mathematical logic. During World War II, Quine worked in a U. S. Navy unit that decoded, translated, and analyzed coded messages from the German submarine fleet. After the war, he returned to teaching the Harvard introductory logic course Philosophy 140. This eventually led to his writing of the 1950 classic text book, Methods of logic.

His major contribution to the philosophical world begins with "his criticism of the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths" in his 1951 Two dogmas of empiricism. This early work was summarized in his 1953 collection From a logical point of view. Quine's thought throughout the 1950s "worked toward a more systematic view," best presented in his 1960 Word and object, dealing with the "meaning, knowledge of meaning, and reference from a naturalistic point of view...a treatise on the philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science..."

Quine produced much work throughout the 1960s through the 1980s and even into the 1990s when he was in his ninetieth year. Some of his more important titles were: Ontological relativity and other essays (1969), The roots of reference (1974), Theories and things (1981), Pursuit of truth (1990), and Stimulus to science (1995).

He was briefly the chairman of his department at Harvard, president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1957, and president of the Association for Symbolic Logic from 1953-1955. He was a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1948-1978, received seventeen honorary degrees, the Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy in 1993, and the Kyoto Prize in 1996.

Source: Willard van Orman Quine. Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Science Memorial Minute, 2002.

Arrangement

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• (387) Gadol, Eugene T. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1978-1998. 1 folder.

• (388) Galison, Peter Louis. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1986-1996. 1 folder.
  Some correspondence in Spanish.

• (389) Gardner, Martin, 1914-. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1961-1963. 1 folder.
  Composition by Quine removed to series: Compositions by Quine.

• (390) Gargano, Antonio, 1947-. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1992. 1 folder.

• (391) Garland Publishing, Inc. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1989-1990. 1 folder.
  Includes correspondence regarding the publication of Quine's 1932 thesis, The logic of sequences. Also includes a brochure for the series, Harvard dissertations in philosophy.

• (392) Garofalo, Bruno, 1945-. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1977-1981 and undated. 1 folder.

• (393) Garrett, Richard. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1981. 1 folder.

• (394) Garrido, Manuel. Correspondence with WVOQ, 1972-1988 and undated. 1 folder.
  Most correspondence in Spanish.