Willard van Orman Quine - Science Quotes

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Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.

Willard van Orman Quine
My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat — a boat which, to revert to Neurath's figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.

Willard van Orman Quine
It is the tension between the scientist's laws and his own attempted breaches of them that powers the engines of science and makes it forge ahead.

Willard van Orman Quine
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.

Willard van Orman Quine
Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.

Willard van Orman Quine
It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

Willard van Orman Quine
Science is like a boat, which we rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat.

Willard van Orman Quine