Quine, Willard V.

Quine, Willard V. (Van Orman) (1908–  ) philosopher, logician; born in Akron, Ohio. After earning degrees from Oberlin College and Harvard and studying in Prague under Rudolf Carnap, he taught philosophy at Harvard from 1936 to 1978 with some interruptions, including U.S. Navy service in World War II and posts at Oxford (1953–54, 1973–74). Much of his work, especially at first, was highly technical, but he also examined broader issues within a systematic linguistic framework. Though sympathetic to logical positivism, he rejected such tenets as the analytic-synthetic distinction. His influential writings appear in such books as From a Logical Point of View (1953) and Word and Object (1960).