Willard van Orman Quine - Objects Quotes

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The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.

Willard van Orman Quine
Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.

Willard van Orman Quine
It makes no sense to say what the objects of a theory are, beyond saying how to interpret or reinterpret that theory in another.

Willard van Orman Quine
Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race.

Willard van Orman Quine
Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.

Willard van Orman Quine
Theory may be deliberate, as in a chapter on chemistry, or it may be second nature, as in the immemorial doctrine of ordinary enduring middle-sized physical objects.

Willard van Orman Quine
Treating 'water' as a name of a single scattered object is not intended to enable us to dispense with general terms and plurality of reference. Scatter is in fact an inconsequential detail.

Willard van Orman Quine
For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise.

Willard van Orman Quine