Sunday, April 30, 2023

Logic and Calypso

 Last week's obituaries of Harry Belafonte brought to mind a passage from the 1980 foreword to Willard Van Orman Quine's From a Logical Point of View:

I foresaw by 1952 that [the writing of Word and Object] would be a long pull and became impatient to make some of my philosophical views conveniently accessible meanwhile. Henry Aiken and I were with our wives in a Greenwich Village nightspot when I told him of the plan, and Harry Belafonte had just sung the calypso "From a logical point of view." Henry noted that this would do nicely as a title for the volume, and so it did.

I can't offhand think of another work of philosophy that takes its title from a song.

No comments:

Post a Comment