Quine’s Word and Object

Willard Van Orman Quine – Word and Object (1960)
Reading Quine’s work, from the Peirce, Carnap, Davidson school of linguistic modelling of what we can know about the world. Interesting because the book is written entirely from a linguistic perspective – components of language learning and usage, and translation between languages – in no way aimed at Cybernetics or Knowledge Modelling, so none of the messages are biased to that purpose. Very readable with lots of common sense examples. Starts by illustrating the social processes of learning language and meaning. Then, in “Language and Truth” chapters, he covers use of language in objective “scientific method” – and the apparently natural concepts of simplicity used in induction of facts – Occam’s razor if you like. A promising start, relevant to several threads of interest here.
(Q: is it Quine as in queen, or Quine as in dine ?)
(Post note – corrected Pierce to Peirce in response to query from Davin Enigl.)