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.

W. V. Quine was Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. He wrote twenty-one books, thirteen of them published by Harvard University Press.

Read More by W. V. Quine:

• Elementary Logic, Revised Edition
• From Stimulus to Science
• From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Second Revised Edition
• Mathematical Logic, Revised Edition
• Methods of Logic, Fourth Edition
• Philosophy of Logic, 2nd Edition
• Pursuit of Truth, Revised Edition
• Set Theory and Its Logic, Revised Edition
• Selected Logic Papers, Enlarged Edition
• Theories and Things
• The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, Revised Edition
• Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine
• Quine in Dialogue
• Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays