Quine: The last and greatest scientific philosopher

It has only been in comparatively recent times that W. V. Quine (1908-2000) has been subjected to significant historical treatment. No doubt this has been due largely to the length of his philosophical career, spanning roughly seventy years. For the same reason, he has generally been regarded as a contemporary analytic philosopher, with much of the analytic philosophy since 1950, being, one way or another, a response to his views. 2 Indeed, I would claim that it is contemporary analytic philosophy that has done most to shape our understanding of Quine’s philosophy. In this chapter, I will argue that viewing Quine in this way treats him as too familiar; it ignores Quine’s deep engagement with the earlier and, I would say, now largely neglected, tradition of scientific philosophy, which held much sway over Anglo-American philosophy until the 1950s. 3 All of Quine’s three great teachers-Bertrand Russell, C. I. Lewis, and Rudolf Carnap-had deep connections to this tradition. And while Quine himself has generally eschewed philosophical labels, scientific philosophy is one that he has espoused. 4 Indeed, I will claim that through the refining of his teachers’ views, Quine can really be read as the culmination of the scientific tradition in philosophy.