The Harvard University Press asked 'the most distinguished and influential of living philosophers' (Strawson's description of Quine, on the dust-jacket) to produce a collection of loosely-connected essays on topics of his choice in a format inspired by Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary - and the result is a remarkable addition to English literature. Quine is not only a great philosopher, but also a master of the English language and a genuine polymath; and the 'dictionary' format - more than eighty articles ranging from A (Alphabet) to Z (Zero), and including entries on Belief, Communication, Free Will, Idiotisms, Longitude and Latitude, Marks, Prizes, Latin Pronunciation, Tolerance and Trinity - gives him ample opportunity to write (and, he tells us in the Preface, to have 'more than half the fun') about 'lowlier themes' than philosophy (which occupies less than half the book). Apart from philosophy, the subjects most fully represented in the book are mathematics, logic and language (including English etymologies, stylistics, and the philology of the Romance languages), but there are also many short essays in which Quine pokes fun or grumbles good-naturedly about various pet peeves. (The essays on Artificial Languages, Extravagance, Mathematosis, Usage and Abuses are wonderful examples.) Perhaps the most charmingly lighthearted essay in the book is the one titled 'Misling'. Many people have been misled to pronounce 'misled' as 'mizzled'. 'But the verb misle that is born of that misconception is too pat to pass up, descriptive as it is of the very circumstance that engendered it,' Quine tells us. 'Perhaps we can press it into service as a mild word for the restrained sort of deception, not quite actionable as fraud even in Ralph Nader's day, that has a respected place in enlightened modern merchandising.' Although Quine steers clear of political themes for the most part, there is one beautifully formulated statement of his conservative creed - the essay on Freedom. An added charm is the not quite self-deprecating humour exhibited by some of the best remarks in the book, as when Quine writes (in the essay on Communication):

LRB 21 April 1988 | PDF Download