I’m working on the following children’s story. I will update this post as I complete the drawings.
W. V. O. Quine is my best friend.
Quine’s first names are Willard, Van, and Orman.
Quine’s friends call him ‘Van’.
Quine was born in Ohio. Quine studied with Whitehead to get his PhD.
Whitehead wrote Principia Mathematica with Russell.
Quine loves logic.
Quine studied with Carnap in the Vienna Circle.
Quine and Carnap were good friends.
Carnap was a logical positivist.
Logical positivism believes in the analytic/synthetic distinction.
Analytic statements are true because of their meaning.
“All bachelors are unmarried men” is analytically true.
Quine doesn’t like the analytic/synthetic distinction.
Quine argued against Carnap in Two Dogmas of Empiricism.
Quine thinks all our sentences face the tribunal of experience together.
People didn’t like Quine for rejecting analyticity.
People worried that Quine was rejecting meaning entirely.
But Quine was no fool.
So Quine’s experience provided him with meaning for wearing funny hats?
You should have Van taking the two dogmas for a walk (with their nametags on) and biting Carnap in the ass after that little bit. That would give me the giggles. Gee-gee-gee!
Even though it isn’t even done yet, that’s already the best blog post ever.
brandizzy: good idea. I’ve sort of hit a brick wall staring at the Vienna Circle. Thems some disturbing DWMs. Any more suggestions will help me along.
Alright, I’m leaving for california in a few hours so this project goes on hiatus. I’ll complete it when i get back, I suppose.
You can find a song about Quine written to “Modern Major General” here:
http://hcs.harvard.edu/~hrp/vol10.html