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Veery: Of your philosophy, what is your favorite? W.V. Quine: I should mention above all, Quiddities. It has been getting round, and in fact it's even in Penguin now. I wish I could do more of that because now and then I just happen to pick the book up and read a few pages, and I'm tickled all over again; and that's what I'm particularly proud of. In fact, I'm particularly pleased when one of my readers comes up with something he admires not in the way of my philosophical views but some line, maybe in one of my logic books or one of my philosophy books, some line that appealed to him, that had some sort of surprise or witty turn to it. |
Veery: What is the most rewarding aspect of philosophy?
W.V. Quine: Well, for me, it's clarification of the nature of the world,
the nature of reality. I seek the same satisfaction that one looks
for in science in general, in theoretical science.
Veery: When you started in philosophy, what did you think of it? What
do you think of it now?
W.V. Quine: Well, my first philosophical impulse I guess was, still in my
fairly early years, fed in part by Edgar Allen Poe's piece, “Eureka. “
It fed my curiosity about nature, about everything, about the cosmos.
A few years later led into reading popular science, Arthur S.
Eddington, Bertrand Russell, Sir James Jeans. So that's been the
impulse. I wonder: have I forgotten your question, or am I getting
away from it?
Veery: When you started in philosophy, what did you think of it? What
do you think of it now? How did you view philosophy, and how do you
view it now? Is it still functioning, fulfilling the same needs to
you as it did before? Are you still viewing it and identifying it the
same as you did before?
W.V. Quine: Certainly the impulse for me is the same. In the earliest
days, I did have notions of brilliant illuminations from the readings
of the things that started out so mysteriously: Bertrand Russell on
the philosophy of mathematics and well again Poe on the cosmos and
then the popular science writers. Well, I think I see philosophy very
much the same. I see philosophy as a handmaiden of the sciences, and I
have visions of its being increasingly useful in a practical way for
the scientists as the old rather artificial barriers between
philosophy and science are weakening. There's much more
collaboration.
Veery: As your years in philosophy accumulate and your experience in
the field grows, what becomes more clear to you? Either about
yourself or philosophy itself and what you do with it.
W.V. Quine: There has certainly been a broadening. The first twenty years
(1930 - 1950) of my professional efforts, my emphasis has been
pretty much on the mathematical side, mathematical logic; although
philosophy has been the motivation, the content and style has been
fairly mathematical. And then there's been a broadening in that
respect and more discursive philosophy from well, well, about from
1950 on, predominantly logic. In fact the turning point, in so far as
there was one, was brought about by my years in the Navy which were
1943 - 1946, as a matter of fact. And when I began teaching after
coming out of the Navy, the subjects were more centrally
philosophical: theory of knowledge primarily and philosophy of
science; and I think along with it, in later years, more recent
years, there's been some increase in openness and tolerance of
philosophical views that previously had turned me off because of
their vagueness or as it seemed irresponsibility. But I think
that change, as far as it exists, is pretty slight. I'm still capable
of being pretty impatient with slipshod philosophy.
Veery: You sit down at a desk with some paper. You're envisioning
another work. Here you are in your eighties. Are you more able to
now, in your eighties, through this experience of having done it so
much, to say to yourself, "I know how to get to the point that I want
to get to here faster than I did when I was in my fifties"?
W.V. Quine: Well, I wonder. Yes. Yes, I am, certainly somewhat, and I'm
more familiar with the sort of fumbling that goes in to it. It's a
mixture of jotting down the beginnings of an outline in so far as I
think of likely topics for the beginning and maybe writing a
fragment that's going to be occurring farther along but not yet
having decided how that's going to fit in. A good deal of effort
goes on, writing, inserting and cutting and pasting. I still do it
the old-fashioned way; I haven't gotten converted to a word processor yet.
This way the finished manuscript is apt to be rather a patchwork
although consecutive. Sometimes it's bad enough so that I then type
it myself.
Veery: When you're doing things more, you're learning the path
perhaps more to where you want to get to, is it that when you do
more of it, and you have more experience, you learn more of what to
leave out, what to avoid? Is that one of the things that becomes
obvious to you?
W.V. Quine: Yes, that very definitely. And I think perhaps that
is a result of my teaching experience. I do make more of an effort to
put myself in the reader's place: what he's up to, what he's apt to
know already, or what I need to explain a bit, and what also seems to
be heading directly to the main objective rather than incidental
information. So I think there must be quite a striking difference
between my earlier writings and my later ones in that respect.
Veery: In poetry, there seems to be a pattern of poets who when they
get older, have more experience and have been doing it more,
have a tendency to cull rather as opposed to expand. Would you feel
the same way about yourself and the pattern of your life's work?
W.V. Quine: Yes, I do that; perhaps I do it more than I used to; I've
always tended to cull. I generally find that I'm more satisfied with
a piece after it's shorter, and I find that also in reading other
people's work.
Veery, 1993
Selections from the larger interview
by written drafts and telephone