The Ways of Paradox, and Other Essays [Hardcover]

Willard Van Orman Quine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1976 | ISBN-10: 0674948351 | ISBN-13: 978-0674948358 | Edition: Enlarged

This expanded edition of The Ways of Paradox includes papers that are among Professor Quine's most important and influential, such as "Truth by Convention," "Carnap and Logical Truth," "On Carnap's Views on Ontology," "The Scope and Language of Science," and "Posits and Reality." Many of these essays deal with unresolved issues of central interest to philosophers today. About half of them are addressed to "a wider public than philosophers." The remainder are somewhat more professional and technical. This new edition of The Ways of Paradox contains eight essays that appeared after publication of the first edition, and it retains the seminal essays that must be read by anyone who seeks to master Quine's philosophy.

Quine has been characterized, in The New York Review of Books, as "the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank." His "philosophical innovations add up to a coherent theory of knowledge which he has for the most part constructed single-handed." In The Ways of Paradox new generations of readers will gain access to this philosophy.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[Quine] is at once the most elegant expounder of systematic logic in the older, pre-Gödelian style of Frege and Russell, the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank....The title essay of Quine's The Ways of Paradox is a beautifully concise survey of the nature and significance of paradoxes...In general Quine's style combines a certain rotundity of utterance with a verbal wit that exploits the submerged associations and resonances of technical terms.
--Anthony Quinton (New York Review of Books )

The remarkable feature of this collection of essays is the achievement of profundity without the sacrifice of clarity. More than a clear, concise, nonmathematical presentation of logical perplexities and problems, this work is one written so that any intelligent layman can grasp the ideas wrestled with by Quine and other leading logicians. The manner in which the author interprets the pioneers of logical thought possesses the fascination of an exciting game rather than a dry intellectual exercise.
--William S. Sahakian (Boston Globe )

Willard Van Orman Quine is the distinguished Harvard logician and philosopher who for more than a generation, and in prose as fresh and provocative as it is precise, has contributed fundamentally to the substance, the pedagogy, and the philosophy of mathematical logic. (Science ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

W. V. Quine was Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. He wrote twenty-one books, thirteen of them published by Harvard University Press. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 347 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr; Enlarged edition (June 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674948351
• ISBN-13: 978-0674948358
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,605,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure chest, January 29, 2011

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Daniele Sgaravatti (Cologne, Germany) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, Revised Edition (Paperback)

This collection of essays from the great American philosopher is not often cited among his most important works; I think this is a mistake. The reason of the mistake is probably that the book contains material of different kinds; there are "popular" essays, meant for the general educated public, like the title-essay. There are "occasion" pieces, reviews, replies, and the like. There are also some philosophical and logical essays that did not find space in other collections. Nonetheless, I warmly recommend the book. Among the philosophical essays, there are some of Quine's most fundamental contributions, like his two most important pieces on the analytic/synthetic distinction: "Truth by convention" and "Carnap on logical truth" (the view that these two pieces are more important than the much more renowned "Two dogmas.." has been defended by Tyler Burge in his "Logic and Analitycity", Grazer Philosophische Studien 2003). There is also "Quantifiers and propositional attitudes", which was enormously influential in philosophy of language. But the less philosophically central pieces are also very interesting. For example, Quine's review of Strawson's introduction to logical theory is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of 20th century philosophy, as is Quine's discussion of modal logic and his reply to Ruth Barcan Marcus.
The (so-called) popular pieces were also thouroughly enjoyable and stimulating to me - but I am not "general educated public", so I must confess I am not sure how readable they really are for the non-specialist. A special mention is deserved by Quine's "Homage to Rudolf Carnap", a brief obituary dedicated to his mentor, which I found truly touching and inspiring. Overall, the diversity of the works included in this collection ended up being a plus, at least for me.
Quine is a great philosopher and a brilliant writer. Most pieces in the book require some minimal background in logic and/or analytic philosophy, but this is true of all of Quine's work. I recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in philosophy.