Theories and Things

W. V. Quine

    This is a book to be savored, with a little something for a surprisingly wide variety of tastes. Here is Quine on the marvels of The Times Atlas, the virtues and vices of Mencken's The American Language, the mixed blessings that result from flush times for academia, and the bleariness of Mortimer Adler's vision of philosophy. Of course, Quine's more familiar concerns are also represented, with most of the book's twenty-six essays being devoted to various aspects of ontology, epistemology, semantics, and logic...Together they make a wonderful selection of fine, sparkling Quine.
       --Ethics

    The elegance, economy, wit and precision of his writing are among the chief glories of modern philosophy. Never have asceticism of method and austerity of vision been so glitteringly displayed...By virtue of intellectual power, range and fertility of ideas and brilliance of presentation, Quine is the most distinguished and influential of living philosophers...To all philosophers...this volume will be a source of intense intellectual pleasure.
       --P. F. Strawson, London Review of Books

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