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Full Idea
Since 1750 empiricism shows five turns for the better. First was a shift from ideas to words. Second a shift from terms to sentences. Third the shift to systems of sentences. Fourth the abandonment of analytic-synthetic dualism. Fifth was naturalism.
Gist of Idea
Empiricism improvements: words for ideas, then sentences, then systems, then no analytic, then naturalism
Source
Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.67)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Theories and Things' [Harvard 1981], p.67
A Reaction
[compressed] Quine must be largely credited with the last two. The first four are almost entirely linguistic in character, which is characteristic of mid-twentieth-century empiricism. I would offer the recognition of explanation as central for the sixth.
| 19046 | Empiricism improvements: words for ideas, then sentences, then systems, then no analytic, then naturalism [Quine] |
| 19047 | Bentham's contextual definitions preserved terms after their denotation became doubtful [Quine] |
| 19048 | Contextual definition shifted the emphasis from words to whole sentences [Quine] |
| 19049 | In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning [Quine] |
| 19050 | Holism in language blurs empirical synthetic and empty analytic sentences [Quine] |