Full Idea
Translation of our remote past or future discourse into the terms we now know could be about as tenuous and arbitrary a projection as translation of a heathen language was seen to be.
Gist of Idea
Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages
Source
Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.V,p.25)
Book Reference
Quine,Willard: 'Ontological Relativity and Other Essays' [Columbia 1969], p.25
A Reaction
Is he seriously saying that we can't understand Shakespeare, because holism implies that we would have to be Elizabethans? So scholarship is in vain? Is yesterday the 'past'?