Quine concludes: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.Individual experiences “along the edges” may be dismissed as errors or hallu-
cinations if they disturb more central beliefs. But even our core beliefs of mathe-
matics and logic are subject to possible revision. There is no final truth nor even a
clear distinction between the truths of logic and the truths of experience, that is,
between analytic and synthetic.
Alex Orenstein,Willard Van Orman Quine(Boston: Twayne, 1977); Gary Kemp,
Quine: A Guide for the Perplexed(London: Continuum, 2006); and Peter Hylton,
Quine(Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2007) provide good places to begin further
study, whereas Roger F. Gibson,The Philosophy of W.V. Quine: An Expository
Essay(Tampa: University Presses of Florida, 1982); George D. Romanas,Quine
and Analytic Philosophy(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983); Ilham Dilman,Quine on
Ontology, Necessity, and Experience: A Philosophical Critique(Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1984); and Christopher Hookway,Quine: Language, Experience,
and Reality(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988) have written critical
investigations. For information on Quine’s life, see his autobiography,The Time
of My Life: An Autobiography(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985). For collections of
essays, see Donald Davidson and Jaakko Hintikka, eds.,Words and Objections:
Essays on the Work of W.V. Quine (Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
D. Reidel, 1969); Robert W. Shahan and Chris Swoyer, eds.,Essays on the
Philosophy of W.V. Quine(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979); Robert
Barrett and Roger Gibson, eds.,Perspectives on Quine(Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1993); Paolo Leonardi and Marlo Santambrogio, eds.,On Quine: New Essays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robert L. Arrington and Johann
Glock, eds.,Wittgenstein and Quine(Oxford: Routledge, 1996); Lynn Hankinson
Nelson and Jack Nelson, eds.,Feminist Interpretations of W.V. Quine(College
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003); Roger F. Gibson, Jr., ed.,
The Cambridge Companion to Quine(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004); and, especially, Lewis Edwin Hahn and Paul Arthur Schilpp, eds.,The
Philosophy of W.V. Quine(La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1986), another volume in the
Library of Living Philosophers Series, which includes Quine’s responses to crit-
ics and a short version of his autobiography.