Willard Van Orman Quine (born 1908), American philosopher, is best known for his advocacy of the logical regimentation of ordinary language.

On June 25, 1908, W. V. Quine was born in Akron, Ohio. He earned the bachelor of arts degree summa cum laude in 1930 from Oberlin College. At Harvard University Graduate School he concentrated on logic under the supervision of Alfred North Whitehead. He received his doctorate in 1932. Quine then traveled to Vienna, Austria. He was there when the circle of logical positivist philosophers flourished, studied mathematical logic at Warsaw, and in Prague, befriended Rudolf Carnap, a leader of the logical positivist movement.

Quine's A System of Logic (1934) contributed significantly to the development of mathematical set theory. In 1936 he joined the Harvard faculty. His essay "New Foundations of Mathematical Logic" (1937) retained in principle Bertrand Russell's theory of types (a revision of set theory) but sought to avoid its complexities. Nevertheless, Quine's...