Quine traces the path from rudimentary particles impinging on human sensory organs to man's most highly evolved behavior, the construction of strip malls. For those not familiar with postmodernist synchrocyclotron engineering, the going will be virtually impossible, but a basic knowledge of addition and subtraction will go a long way toward helping the reading become totally confused. The ideas are both painful and tasty, but it's important to floss your teeth carefully after reading in order to grasp the full ramifications of Quine's point. For those who were driven psychotic by Quine's other work, this book will prove immensely helpful in whiling away the hours while waiting for the nurse to bring your Haldol.

Faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap corporate bodies of theories in a single bound, Quine stands up for the American way by showing the reader just how silly and utterly unconnected from reality modern analytic philosophy has become. True to form, Quine has cut and pasted a number of Martha Stewart's hors d'oeurve recipes into his text, disguising them in clever formal logic symbolism. But it is easy to see through this and one can hardly put the book down without musing on how Quine would have made a great chef instead of an incomprehensible Harvard philosopher. Indeterminacy of translation? Right. But when one thinks through Quine's latest reflections on this matter it becomes clear that Quine is really describing a very palatable salad dressing with just the right amount of balsamic vineager. Finally, one puts the text down with the clear understanding that Hilary Putnam's Representation and Reality is really the confession of a closet pastry chef who took a wrong turn in life and ended up on the Harvard philosophy faculty. Nice going, Quine.

Quine traces the path from simple stimulus to man's most advanced response to his environment, the pursuit of science. For those not familiar with mathematical logic, the going will be almost impossible, but a knowledge of the predicate calculus and standard symbolism will carry you through. The ideas are brilliant and entrancing, but you have to work through them carefully to catch the full implication. While this is mostly for those familiar with Quine's other work, the general reader can still get quite a lot from it.

In this incomparable and engaging book Quine takes up many of the questions he raised in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and in his other early papers. In Word and Object, he levels an attack against the traditional notion of meaning that is accepted by so many, because it is understood by so few. Though the position defended here is alomost completely wrong, it is wrong for interesting reasons and, along with Quine's other works, establishes a position regarding matters semantic that, from his ultra-empiricist positivist perspective is nearly inevitable. If you don't find his position at least a little compelling, then your heart is made of stone.

This book is a true classic, both in content and presentation; Quine's pithy style, sometimes ironic, is singular in analytic philosophy. This book describes the generation of reference and logical categories out of the confluence of "sense-data" and "stimulus synonymy," answering with consistency many perennial questions in ontology and epistemology in the process. Chapter two (the infamous "indeterminacy of translation" thesis) is a fascinating linguistic reformulation of the "other minds" problem, demonstrating that one must conclude a type of "ontological relativity" amongst speakers. Along with Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations," Ryle's The Concept of Mind," and Sellars' "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," Quine's magnum opus completes the quadrivium of mid-20th century analytic philosophy which together rang the death-knell of Cartesianism.

This is one of the great books of 20th-century philosophy, with page after page of brilliant arguments. Although Quine had an understated wit and a gracefully economic style, this is not an easy book. I would not tackle it without some training in philosophy, logic, or linguistics. Particularly useful would be some understanding of logical positivism, which Quine is reacting against.

The book's motivating question is how a word (or words) can refer to an object or be used to pick out an object. This might seem to be a narrow topic, but it leads Quine to discuss a large number of epistemological, logical, and metaphysical issues. Quine's conclusions in these areas were so novel and profound that decades later philosophers are still digesting them.

Was Quine right about everything? Surely not, but like all great philosophers, he made us look at the old issues in new ways and made us aware of problems which we hadn't known had existed. For this we can be profoundly grateful.

Willard Van Ormen Quine died 25 December 2000.

Fantastic reading! One gets the feeling that you've just discovered a set of dusty old diaries written by your great-great grandfather. The only thing missing is the original quill pen writing and the smell of old paper! There is no mistaking this was written by a man who was there. The author was no ordinary soldier-he was obviously intelligent and well educated by the way he retained and portrayed so vividly the events and topics of the period. This is not a military history, although there is much historical fact recorded. He discusses not only the battles and life as a soldier, but also the current thinking of both the Union supporters and the rebellion supporters. The editors comments are helpful, often providing important relavent information and correcting historical mistakes. Not all of the text was written on the front lines. Much of it was written in recent retrospect, and probably with the help of other soldiers accounts; so it isn't entirely first hand. Nonetheless, it's as close to the original story one can get. The discussion of the battle scenes is detailed enough to evoke real empathy toward all who lived during the war, yet is sparing of any gory detail. I'm not a military buff. I'm a history buff. I enjoyed the reading for its originality. It puts you squarely back to the 1860's.

This isn't just another Civil War soldier's diary; Van Willard wrote 5 complete journals or "books" during his enlistment with the 3rd Wisconsin Infantry. You will discover that Willard was a very insightful and educated fellow, as he offers his thoughts and opinions about the war, the south, slavery, immigrant troops, the Iron Brigade, officers and so forth. Viewing the war from his eyes offers the reader an entirely different perspective than what we are used to finding in other Civil War books and diaries.

I highly recommend this book for any civil war buff or for anyone interested in the finest regiment to ever leave the Badger State, Wisconsin's 3rd Regiment of Infantry Volunteers.!

This book, edited by Richard Creath, is valuable both as a biographical work on the lives of Carnap and Quine, and as an resource for scholars interested in the Carnap-Quine debates (and the history of 20th century analytic philosophy more generally). The correspondence, which constitutes most of the book, provides a nice glimpse into the personal and academic friendship between Carnap and Quine: a friendship that developed from their first meeting in the 1930's till Carnap's untimely death in 1970. The book also includes a useful 43 page introduction by Creath focusing on the Carnap-Quine debates on analyticity. Previously unpublished manuscripts, i.e., Quine's "Three Lectures on Carnap" and Carnap's "Quine on Analyticity," are valuable resources for philosophers interested in the Carnap-Quine debates. The book concludes appropriately with Quine's "Homeage to Carnap," a personal tribute to his mentor. Overall, Creath does a superb editorial job and the resulting book is a pleasure to read.

book is due to be reprinted by Open Court in September 199

The book is quite basic and introductory. I think it would be useful to many people who want to start thinking philosophically. However, it is boring. Yet, I do like the term "web of belief" a lot. Unfortunately, though, they do not expound upon it much in that book.

A very enjoyable, introductory philosophy text. It is a very readable and easy introduction to Quine's thought.

I highly recommend it to the thoughtful reader who is interested in contemporary philosophy.

This book points to the underpinnings of rational thought and scientific method. There is no such thing as THE scientific method. But all versions of the scientific method have certain basic elements such as hypothesis, evidence, testing of theory and so forth. This book explains all this and from the position of philosophy that invented the scientific method. The authors show the logic behind rational thought which all adds up to eminent common sense. After reading this book many years ago, it became clear to me how Einstein came up with the theory of relativity. The theory is an explanation of why the Miachelson-Morley experiment failed to find the ether. This book makes a lot of sense. Its a bit pricey, but if you like the philosophy behind rational thinking and scientific method, you might consider the purchase of this book.

This book gives a good introduction to argumentation theory and its twists and turns over the course of its existence. I found it helpful to get started, especially coming from a completely different field. It gives the essence of Toulmin and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca but I would have liked to see a bit more on Austin and Searle.But then again the references mentioned are very extensive and can be followed up. All in all a good book if a bit pricey for students (whatever happened to the paperback cover?)

The only complaint I have about this collection (and of *Theories and Things*) is a certain lack of systematicity. In the collection, of course, not at all in Quine's thought. Both contain a very broad range of essays from a decade or two of Quine's career. They range from a public radio piece on the limits to extremely technical work in logic. Quine's range is immense, and it would be much more accessible if his essays were collected more thematically (in something like the manner of Davidson's) than, as I take it they were, just chronologically. It's difficult either to remember where you read a passing comment of his, or to try to read systematically through all of his essays on a given theme.

A passing complaint, I suppose. Other than that it's just first rate.

This book looks at Quine's philosophy and the consequences of Quine's conclusions on analytic philosophy. Though it is fairly lucid, his unquestioning acceptance of everything Quine says makes a lot of what is said seem superficial.