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Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary
The appellation “polymath” is often lightly bestowed, but it can be applied with confidence to the celebrated philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine’s areas of interest are panoramic, as this lively book amply demonstrates.
Moving from A ( alphabet ) to Z ( zero ), Quiddities roams through more than eighty topics, each providing a full measure of piquant thought, wordplay, and wisdom, couched in easy and elegant prose―“Quine at his unbuttoned best,” in Donald Davidson’s words. Philosophy, language, and mathematics are the subjects most fully represented; tides of entries include belief , communication , free will , idiotisms , longitude and latitude , marks , prizes , Latin pronunciation , tolerance , trinity . Even the more technical entries are larded with homely lore, anecdote, and whimsical humor.
Quiddities will be a treat for admirers of Quine and for others who like to think, who care about language, and who enjoy the free play of intellect on topics large and small. For this select audience, it is an ideal book for browsing.
Moving from A ( alphabet ) to Z ( zero ), Quiddities roams through more than eighty topics, each providing a full measure of piquant thought, wordplay, and wisdom, couched in easy and elegant prose―“Quine at his unbuttoned best,” in Donald Davidson’s words. Philosophy, language, and mathematics are the subjects most fully represented; tides of entries include belief , communication , free will , idiotisms , longitude and latitude , marks , prizes , Latin pronunciation , tolerance , trinity . Even the more technical entries are larded with homely lore, anecdote, and whimsical humor.
Quiddities will be a treat for admirers of Quine and for others who like to think, who care about language, and who enjoy the free play of intellect on topics large and small. For this select audience, it is an ideal book for browsing.
249 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 1987
15 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
About the author
Willard Van Orman Quine
107 books230 followers"Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 Akron, Ohio – December 25, 2000) (known to intimates as "Van"), was an American analytic philosopher and logician. From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was affiliated in some way with Harvard University, first as a student, then as a professor of philosophy and a teacher of mathematics, and finally as an emeritus elder statesman who published or revised seven books in retirement. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard, 1956-78. Quine falls squarely into the analytic philosophy tradition while also being the main proponent of the view that philosophy is not conceptual analysis. His major writings include "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", which attacked the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions and advocated a form of semantic holism, and Word and Object which further developed these positions and introduced the notorious indeterminacy of translation thesis." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_...
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 24, 2015
Enlightening and fun to read, not many authors master this combination!
Intro/summary of some fundamental concepts as well as lesser-known curiosities in the fields of analytic philosophy, language (incl. a lot of etymology), mind, logic, mathematics etc.
Some basic knowledge in these areas is certainly useful to get more out of it, although probably not entirely necessary.
Intro/summary of some fundamental concepts as well as lesser-known curiosities in the fields of analytic philosophy, language (incl. a lot of etymology), mind, logic, mathematics etc.
Some basic knowledge in these areas is certainly useful to get more out of it, although probably not entirely necessary.
March 23, 2022
EN: Certainly an interesting venture into the mind of W.O.Quine and into analytical philosophy. As expected, you will get a lot of language analysis.
CZ: Musím vyseknout poklonu překladateli, neboť si s mnoha oříšky výtečně poradil. Zejména překlad knihy, která hovoří o jazyce a jeho vlastnostech musel představovat velkou výzvu. Ani bych se proto nezlobil za pár překlepů. Celkově mi však nesedl Quinův styl slovníku. Raději bych buď četl samostatné, ale ucelenější eseje nebo jedno dílo s jasnou linkou argumentace.
CZ: Musím vyseknout poklonu překladateli, neboť si s mnoha oříšky výtečně poradil. Zejména překlad knihy, která hovoří o jazyce a jeho vlastnostech musel představovat velkou výzvu. Ani bych se proto nezlobil za pár překlepů. Celkově mi však nesedl Quinův styl slovníku. Raději bych buď četl samostatné, ale ucelenější eseje nebo jedno dílo s jasnou linkou argumentace.
December 22, 2021
Great bedtime reading, on logical, philosophical, mathematical and linguistic concepts. Some of the logic and maths stuff was over my head, but on the whole it is pretty accessible to anyone with, say, 201-level familiarity with these fields. The style is sort of dryish, but not humourless. One of the big merits of the book is how it ranges from concise but (to repeat) accessible and useful pedagogy to cosmic-level ruminations (always down to earth in tone). This makes sense, as Quine was both a writer of school text-books in logic and one of the great 20th-century logicians, but, as we know, neither one is a guarantee of communication skills, so his deserve celebration.
To offset the bits I couldn't understand, there are a few places where his arguments seem questionable and his facts not quite straight - just one example: in the entry 'Semantic switch', which seemed to me the weakest in the book overall, he says: "To call a dog or a follower faithful ... is not to say that he is full of faith, but that he inspires it." I had to mull this over a bit, not wanting to just dismiss out of hand a statement from such a clever fellow, but if that is what faithful means, I've had it wrong all my life. Surely it is that the dog, or follower, has faith in its master/mistress (or whatever that figure is called these days)? Though I see on reflection that the dog's (resulting) behaviour makes it in turn a faith/trust-inspiring creature; Quine seems to take this aspect as the primary or core meaning of the word. (Having said that, I'm obliged to note that in a couple of places, he takes a firm stand against the very idea of words as having identifiable specific positive - as opposed to relative - meanings, with an intriguingly Saussurean resonance. (I sound so pretentious! but it's true.))
Many of the entries touch on, or focus on, the limits of conceptual frameworks. He is very un- or even anti-"continental" in this area, since for the most part (if not entirely) he apparently considers borderline paradoxes or incomprehensibilities to be no more than curiosities or at worst cases of regrettable inelegance; generally, in any case, not clues to some profound faultline through the entire domain concerned.
Finally: it's called a dictionary because it's alphabetically ordered and because it doesn't have a tight unifying structure, but in fact it is a collection of mostly inter-related essays, and reading it from front to back is a perfectly workable and enjoyable approach to it.
To offset the bits I couldn't understand, there are a few places where his arguments seem questionable and his facts not quite straight - just one example: in the entry 'Semantic switch', which seemed to me the weakest in the book overall, he says: "To call a dog or a follower faithful ... is not to say that he is full of faith, but that he inspires it." I had to mull this over a bit, not wanting to just dismiss out of hand a statement from such a clever fellow, but if that is what faithful means, I've had it wrong all my life. Surely it is that the dog, or follower, has faith in its master/mistress (or whatever that figure is called these days)? Though I see on reflection that the dog's (resulting) behaviour makes it in turn a faith/trust-inspiring creature; Quine seems to take this aspect as the primary or core meaning of the word. (Having said that, I'm obliged to note that in a couple of places, he takes a firm stand against the very idea of words as having identifiable specific positive - as opposed to relative - meanings, with an intriguingly Saussurean resonance. (I sound so pretentious! but it's true.))
Many of the entries touch on, or focus on, the limits of conceptual frameworks. He is very un- or even anti-"continental" in this area, since for the most part (if not entirely) he apparently considers borderline paradoxes or incomprehensibilities to be no more than curiosities or at worst cases of regrettable inelegance; generally, in any case, not clues to some profound faultline through the entire domain concerned.
Finally: it's called a dictionary because it's alphabetically ordered and because it doesn't have a tight unifying structure, but in fact it is a collection of mostly inter-related essays, and reading it from front to back is a perfectly workable and enjoyable approach to it.
October 16, 2024
NO TITLE
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) was an American philosopher and logician who taught at Harvard University, and wrote many books.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1987 book, “This is one of a loosely linked series of loose-knit books inspired by Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary… Mine is philosophical in part, but lowlier themes occupy more than half the book and afforded me more than half the fun, philosophy on the whole being no laughing matter. The one trait that the book shares with a true dictionary, namely alphabetical order in lieu of structure, brings grateful release from the constraint of linear exposition.”
Under “Belief,” he states, “An enamored young man has his reasons for subscribing to the tenets of his fiancée’s church, and a heretic threatened by the Inquisition has his reasons for a similar move; but these are cases of feigning belief, of paying lip or pen service, and not of believing. Pascal’s notorious wager, on the other hand, and Tertullian’s ‘credo quia impossible est,’ and William James’s ‘Will to Believe,’ strike me as strange distortions of the notion of belief. Hoping or wishing can conduce to believing, but only by seducing the subject into overestimating his fancied evidence.” (Pg. 19)
Under “Gambling,” he observes, “We can applaud the state lottery as a public subsidy of intelligence, for it yields public income that is calculated to lighten the tax burden of us prudent abstainers at the expense of the benighted masses of wishful thinkers. It differs morally from the private casino or underground numbers game in that its beneficiaries are all of us in the prudent section of the general public, rather than a greedy few private operators on or over the edge of the law.” (Pg. 77)
Under “Knowledge,” he points out, “Rejection of the very concept of knowledge is thus oddly ironical. It is not skepticism. Skeptics accept the concept of knowledge and deny its applications. What we are concluding rather is that the term does not meet scientific and philosophical standards of coherence and precision. The term retains its rough utility in the vernacular, like ‘big,’ and, contrary to what the skeptic claims, there is plenty to which it then most emphatically applies.” (Pg. 109)
He adds, “The limitations of the concept have had insidious effects, however, even apart from philosophical contexts. Creationists challenge the evolutionists, who, being scientists, scruple to claim absolute certainty. The creationists then respond that the theory of evolution is therefore not KNOWN to be true, and hence that creationism should get equal time. Religious apologists and occultists on other fronts take heart in similar fashion.” (Pg. 109-110)
Under “Paradoxes,” he says about Russell’s Paradox [concerning “the class of all classes not belonging to themselves”]: “Russell’s Paradox… is an ANTINOMY: it discredits a previously accepted principle of reasoning. An easy review comes to mind: just say that classes are determined by all membership conditions except one, namely, non-self-membership. This will not do. Russell’s Paradox is just the first and simplest of a series. With a little effort we can derive a contradiction also from assuming a class of all those classes that are not members of MEMBERS of themselves.” (Pg. 146)
Under “Tolerance,” he suggests, “Militant atheism aside, religious tolerance tends to be inversely proportional to religious faith. If someone firmly believes that eternal salvation and damnation hinge on embracing his particular religion, he would be callous indeed to sit tolerantly back and watch others go to hell. If on the other hand someone subscribes to no religion, and is appalled by the inhumanity of religious intolerance, then his moral course of action would evidently be to try to stamp out religion and, therewith, religious intolerance. This puts him in the paradoxical position of religious intolerance in turn---intolerance of all religion. Such, then, is the militant atheist. Let us just hope that he exercises his intolerance humanely. Yet I am not prepared unequivocally to cast my lot with the militant atheist either, however, however human his militance. There remains a burning question of the social value of the restraints and ideals imposed by some religions, however false to facts those religions be… A question of tolerance closely parallel to the religious one recurs … in the teaching of controversial subjects such as philosophy… if one pursues philosophy in a scientific spirit as a quest for truth, then tolerance of wrong-headed philosophy is as unreasonable as tolerance of astrology would be on the part of the astrophysicist, and as unethical as tolerance of Unitarianism on the part of the hellfire fundamentalist.” (Pg. 208-209)
This is one of Quine’s most interesting books, and includes his thoughts on a wide variety of areas on which he never deals with elsewhere. It will be “must reading” for anyone interested in Quine’s thought.
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) was an American philosopher and logician who taught at Harvard University, and wrote many books.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1987 book, “This is one of a loosely linked series of loose-knit books inspired by Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary… Mine is philosophical in part, but lowlier themes occupy more than half the book and afforded me more than half the fun, philosophy on the whole being no laughing matter. The one trait that the book shares with a true dictionary, namely alphabetical order in lieu of structure, brings grateful release from the constraint of linear exposition.”
Under “Belief,” he states, “An enamored young man has his reasons for subscribing to the tenets of his fiancée’s church, and a heretic threatened by the Inquisition has his reasons for a similar move; but these are cases of feigning belief, of paying lip or pen service, and not of believing. Pascal’s notorious wager, on the other hand, and Tertullian’s ‘credo quia impossible est,’ and William James’s ‘Will to Believe,’ strike me as strange distortions of the notion of belief. Hoping or wishing can conduce to believing, but only by seducing the subject into overestimating his fancied evidence.” (Pg. 19)
Under “Gambling,” he observes, “We can applaud the state lottery as a public subsidy of intelligence, for it yields public income that is calculated to lighten the tax burden of us prudent abstainers at the expense of the benighted masses of wishful thinkers. It differs morally from the private casino or underground numbers game in that its beneficiaries are all of us in the prudent section of the general public, rather than a greedy few private operators on or over the edge of the law.” (Pg. 77)
Under “Knowledge,” he points out, “Rejection of the very concept of knowledge is thus oddly ironical. It is not skepticism. Skeptics accept the concept of knowledge and deny its applications. What we are concluding rather is that the term does not meet scientific and philosophical standards of coherence and precision. The term retains its rough utility in the vernacular, like ‘big,’ and, contrary to what the skeptic claims, there is plenty to which it then most emphatically applies.” (Pg. 109)
He adds, “The limitations of the concept have had insidious effects, however, even apart from philosophical contexts. Creationists challenge the evolutionists, who, being scientists, scruple to claim absolute certainty. The creationists then respond that the theory of evolution is therefore not KNOWN to be true, and hence that creationism should get equal time. Religious apologists and occultists on other fronts take heart in similar fashion.” (Pg. 109-110)
Under “Paradoxes,” he says about Russell’s Paradox [concerning “the class of all classes not belonging to themselves”]: “Russell’s Paradox… is an ANTINOMY: it discredits a previously accepted principle of reasoning. An easy review comes to mind: just say that classes are determined by all membership conditions except one, namely, non-self-membership. This will not do. Russell’s Paradox is just the first and simplest of a series. With a little effort we can derive a contradiction also from assuming a class of all those classes that are not members of MEMBERS of themselves.” (Pg. 146)
Under “Tolerance,” he suggests, “Militant atheism aside, religious tolerance tends to be inversely proportional to religious faith. If someone firmly believes that eternal salvation and damnation hinge on embracing his particular religion, he would be callous indeed to sit tolerantly back and watch others go to hell. If on the other hand someone subscribes to no religion, and is appalled by the inhumanity of religious intolerance, then his moral course of action would evidently be to try to stamp out religion and, therewith, religious intolerance. This puts him in the paradoxical position of religious intolerance in turn---intolerance of all religion. Such, then, is the militant atheist. Let us just hope that he exercises his intolerance humanely. Yet I am not prepared unequivocally to cast my lot with the militant atheist either, however, however human his militance. There remains a burning question of the social value of the restraints and ideals imposed by some religions, however false to facts those religions be… A question of tolerance closely parallel to the religious one recurs … in the teaching of controversial subjects such as philosophy… if one pursues philosophy in a scientific spirit as a quest for truth, then tolerance of wrong-headed philosophy is as unreasonable as tolerance of astrology would be on the part of the astrophysicist, and as unethical as tolerance of Unitarianism on the part of the hellfire fundamentalist.” (Pg. 208-209)
This is one of Quine’s most interesting books, and includes his thoughts on a wide variety of areas on which he never deals with elsewhere. It will be “must reading” for anyone interested in Quine’s thought.
April 24, 2022
Quine píše skvěle, ale tyto minieseje pochopí podle mě jen ten, kdo už stejně ví, o čem konkrétní heslo pojednává. A vychutná si Quinovy logické hříčky, odbočky a vtípky.
Četl jsem paralelně s českým překladem nazvaným "Covitosti". Bohužel překlady hesel mají velmi rozdílnou úroveň. Hesla týkající se gramatiky jazyků mi přišla velmi dobrá, hesla o logických pojmech jsou špatně přeložena a někdy přeložené věty nedávají smysl nebo tvrdí opak toho, co je napsáno v originálu. A v českém překladu je více než malé množství otravných překlepů. Jestli se správně pamatuju, českou verzi jsem někdy dávno koupil za pár desetikorun v LK, a proto mi poměr cena/kvalita pořád přijde docela snesitelný. :)
Četl jsem paralelně s českým překladem nazvaným "Covitosti". Bohužel překlady hesel mají velmi rozdílnou úroveň. Hesla týkající se gramatiky jazyků mi přišla velmi dobrá, hesla o logických pojmech jsou špatně přeložena a někdy přeložené věty nedávají smysl nebo tvrdí opak toho, co je napsáno v originálu. A v českém překladu je více než malé množství otravných překlepů. Jestli se správně pamatuju, českou verzi jsem někdy dávno koupil za pár desetikorun v LK, a proto mi poměr cena/kvalita pořád přijde docela snesitelný. :)
January 7, 2022
Quiddiities is an oddity, posing as a dictionary of an odd combination of etymology and mathematics from my favorite modern philosopher, W.V.O. Quine, appreciated by your reviewer for clarity of thought where possible. Possible here.
No stars if you are not interested in either one. Mathematics was his vocation and etymology an avocation. I like both more than does the average bear but read and enjoyed only about half of the entries.
No stars if you are not interested in either one. Mathematics was his vocation and etymology an avocation. I like both more than does the average bear but read and enjoyed only about half of the entries.
June 10, 2024
Quine's little book is a philosophical dictionary, of sorts, with diversions taken into etymology and other reflections on language. The author is renown as one the clearest and most adept with language of analytic philosophers, and all those tendencies are in play here, with small essays on 48 topics, 'Alphabet' through 'Zero.' For anyone interested in the field, the book is a pleasure to read.
April 3, 2023
As humanities are cast, mathematics are chained.
Without structure, exquisite links sum to scrap.
Without structure, exquisite links sum to scrap.
June 15, 2025
Relatively boring, random mentions of basic set theory and logic interspersed with weird ultraprescriptivist musings
January 28, 2016
The content of every single entry reminded me of a smooth and casual thought about a philosophical matter. The entries are written in a very accessible language and the book would probably be the best to pick and open randomly to a page in your spare time.
April 3, 2007
Wonderful stuff. Random thoughts on topics ranging from euphemism to set theory.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews