The Time of My Life: An Autobiography [Paperback]

Willard Van Orman Quine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1985

"Some Pow'r did us the giftie grant/ To see oursels as others can't." With that play on Burns' famous line as a preface, Willard Van Orman Quine sets out to spin the yarn of his life so far. And it is a gift indeed to see one of the world's most famous philosophers as no one else has seen him before. To catch an intimate glimpse of his seminal and controversial theories of philosophy, logic, and language as they evolved, and to hear his warm and often amusing comments on famous contemporary philosophers. From his beginnings in Akron, Ohio in the early 1900s, Quine takes us on a tour of over 100 countries over three-quarters of a century, including close observations of the Depression and two world wars. Far from a philosophical tract, it is an ebullient, folksy account of a richly varied and rounded life. When he does dip into philosophy, it is generally of the armchair sort, and laced with a gentle good humor: "There is that which one wants to do for the glory of having done it, and there is that which one wants to do for the joy of doing it. One can want to be a scientist because he wants to see himself as a Darwin or an Einstein, and one can want to be a scientist because he is curious about what makes things tick .... In normal cases the two kinds of motivation are in time brought to terms .... In me the glory motive lingered ...... In this book, Quine approaches the details of his life the way he has always approached them with a sharp sense of interest, adventure and fun. And he has a skill for picking a word that is just off-center enough to pull an ordinary event out of the humdrum of daily life and evoke its personal meaning. The result is a book of memories that is utterlymesmerizing. Willard Van Orman Quine is the author of numerous books, including "Word and Object, "published by The MIT Press in 1960. A Bradford Book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Mit Pr (June 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262170035
• ISBN-13: 978-0262170031
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,473,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars External things, November 26, 2007

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Time of My Life: An Autobiography (Paperback)

This autobiography is only `a factual account of external things'.
It is a summing up of the author's travel experiences and symposia reminiscences.
It contains only very superficial sketches of his family life and professional career and nearly nothing about his philosophical work or about discussions with colleagues.
There are no emotions, no comments on political or social events, on war or peace. Nothing.

I cannot recommend this book.

For an introduction to the work of Quine, I recommend an interview with Bryan Magee published in `Talking Philosophy: dialogues with Fifteen Leading Philosophers.'

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor formatting, November 13, 2007

By 

Sandro Skansi (Croatia, Central Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Time of My Life: An Autobiography (Paperback)

An interesting book, a bit too long, and a very bad text-formatting job. One would expect much better from MIT press.