Willard van Orman Quine - Sense Quotes

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Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.

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
The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful.

Willard van Orman Quine
Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor.

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

Willard van Orman Quine
No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.

Willard van Orman Quine
Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost.

Willard van Orman Quine
The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.

Willard van Orman Quine