Quine, W. (1970): “Homage to Rudolf Carnap. The Ways of Paradox. (1976) 2^nd ed. Harvard University Press.

Carnap is a towering figure. I see him as the dominant figure in philosophy from the 1930s onward, as Russell had been in the decades before. Russell’s well-earned glory went on mounting afterward, as the evidence of his historical importance continued to pile up; but the leader of the continuing development was Carnap. Some philosophers would assign this role rather to Wittgenstein; but many see the scene as I do.

            Russell had talked of deriving the world from experience by logical construction. Carnap, in his Aufbau, undertook the task in earnest. It was a grand project, and yet a self-effacing one, when so few philosophers understood technical logic. Much ingenuity went into the constructions, much philosophical imagination, much understanding of psychology and physics. If the book did not achieve its exalted purpose, it did afford for the first time an example of what a scientific philosopher might aspire to in the way of rigor and explicitness. It afforded detailed glimpses also, and philosophically exciting ones, of how our knowledge of the external world could in considerable part turn out to be, in Eddington’s phrase, a put-up job. And it provided techniques of construction tht continue to be useful.

            In his Logical Syntax Carnap again vigorously exploited the resources of modern logic for philosophical ends. The book is a mine of proof and opinion on the philosophy of logic and the logic of philosophy. During a critical decade it was the main inspiration of young scientific philosophers. It was the definitive work at the center, from which the waves of tracts and popularizations issued in ever widening circles. Carnap more than anyone else was the embodiment of logical positivism, logical empiricism, the Vienna Circle.

            Ultimately Carnap saw limitations in his thesis of syntax. Thus came his third phase: books and papers on semantics, which have given Carnap a central place in the controversies over modal logic.

            Meanwhile Carnap’s Logical Foundations of Probability continued to develop, a monument to his unwavering concern with the logic of science. Two months ago I had a lively letter from him about some supplementary work that he was doing on this project. Also he sent me a sheaf of material from the new work in progress.

            Carnap was my greatest teacher. I got to him in Prague 38 years ago, just a few months after I had finished my formal studies and received my Ph.D. I was very much his disciple for six years. In later years his views went on evolving and so did mine, in divergent ways. But even where we disagreed he was still setting the theme; the line of my thought was largely determined by problems that I felt his position presented.

            I first heard about Carnap and his Aufbau from John Cooley in 1931, when we were graduate students at Harvard. Herbert Feigl was then at Harvard as an International Rockefeller Fellow. He encouraged me to go to Vienna and to Carnap the following year if I got a traveling fellowship.

            Carnap moved from Vienna to Prague that year, and I followed him. I attended his lectures and read his Logische Syntax page by page s it issued from Ina Carnap’s typewriter. Carnap and Ina were a happy pair. He was 41, she even younger. Along with their intense productivity there was an almost gay informality. If you combine strong intellectual stimulation, easy laughter, and warm friendliness, you have an unbeatable recipe for good company; and such were the Carnaps. On a day when Carnap didn’t have to come into the city to lecture, my wife and I would ride the trolley to the end of the line and walk the remaining few blocks to their little house in a suburb called Pod Homolkou. As the name implies, the place is at the foot of something; and Carnap and Ina would have just come in, likely as not, from an hour on skis on that very slope. Carnap and I would discuss logic and philosophy by the hour. My wife and I would stay to lunch, or maybe dinner; but, if dinner, that was the end of philosophy and logic until another meeting. Carnap’s habits were already austere: no science after dinner, on pain of a sleepless night. No alcohol ever. No coffee.

            I was then an unknown young foreigner of 23, with thirteen inconsequential pages in print and sixteen at press. It was extraordinary of anyone, and characteristic of Carnap, to have been so generous of his time and energy. It was a handsome gift. It was my first experience of sustained intellectual engagement with anyone of an older generation, let alone a great man. It was my first really considerable experience of being intellectually fired by a living teacher rather than by a dead book. I had not been aware of the lack. One goes on listening respectfully to one’s elders, learning things, hearing this with varying degrees of approval, and expecting as a matter of course to have to fall back on one’s own resources and those of the library for the min motive power. One recognizes that his professor has his own work to do, and that the problems and approaches that appeal to him need not coincide in any very fruitful way with those that are exercising oneself. I could see myself in the professor’s place, and I sought nothing different. I suppose most of us go through life with no brighter view that this of the groves of Academe. So might I have done, but for the graciousness of Carnap.

            At Harvard the following year, I lectured on Carnap’s philosophy. Our correspondence was voluminous. He would write in English, practicing up for a visit to America, and I in German; and we would enclose copies for correction. By Christmas 1935 he was with us in our Cambridge flat. Four of us drove with him from Cambridge to the Philosophical Association meeting in Baltimore. The others were Dvid Prall, Mason Gross, and Nelson Goodman. We moved with Carnap as henchmen through the metaphysicians’ camp. We beamed with partisan pride when he countered a diatribe of Arthur Lovejoy’s in his characteristically reasonable way, explaining that if Lovejoy means A then p, and if he means B then q. I had yet to learn how unsatisfying this way of Carnap’s could sometimes be.

            Soon Carnap settled in Chicago. Two years later I took him to task for flirting with modal logic. His answer was characteristic: “I do not indulge in this vice generally and thoroughly . . . though we do not like to apply intensional languages, nevertheless I think we cannot help analyzing them. What would you think of an entomologist who refuses to investigate fleas and lice because he dislikes them?”In 1939 Carnap came to Harvard as visiting professor. Those were historic months: Russell, Carnap, and Tarski were here together. Then it was that Tarski and I argued long with Carnap against his idea of analyticity.

            Because of distances our later meetings were regrettably few. In 1949 my new and present wife and I spent some memorable days at the Carnaps’ in New Mexico. In 1951 he and I held a symposium on ontology in Chicago. In 1958 a reunion in California was prevented by an illness of mine. Finally in 1965, to my delight, I saw him at Popper’s colloquium in London. He looked well and was vigorous and alert. When Popper confronted him on induction his defense was masterly. It carried me back to his confrontation of Lovejoy thirty years before. It was the same old Carnap. His death, while still at the height of his powers, marks a sad date in the history of philosophy.