\brief{W.V.O. Quine an Rudolf Carnap, 31. März 1935}{März 1935}

%52 Garden Street

%Cambridge, Mass.

%March 31, 1935

\anrede{Dear Mr. Carnap,}

\haupttext{What a delight to plan definitely on seeing you both in America next year! This has been our fondest wish for two years,
and we are extremely happy and excited about finally seeing it realized. I wish it were happening this September, but
that it is definitely fixed in the not distant future is splendid news.

It is, I should think, certain that in thus coming to America you will come to stay. There will unquestionably be
offers. My chief hope, of course, is that you will stay at Harvard\II{\harvard}, so that the four of us can be neighbors: for it seems
likely that I shall be continuing here.

My three-year research fellowship expires in June 1936, but I am assured (unofficially, at this early date) of a
teaching position at Harvard\II{\harvard} afterward. Hence, barring an offer of \uline{far} better pay elsewhere, we shall be living
in Cambridge\II{\cambridgeuniv} when you come. We are looking forward keenly to meeting your boat and taking you home with us. You must be
our guests!

Professor L. J. Henderson\IN{\henderson}, distinguished as a biochemist but now interested chiefly in Pareto\IN{\pareto}, was the direct force
behind your invitation to the tercentenary. He is one of the most influential figures behind the Harvard\II{\harvard} administration.
I see him regularly at the weekly dinners of the Society of Fellows\II{\sof}, and on those occasions I interested him in your
work. He readily became interested, because his own attitude is extremely antimetaphysical and skeptical. (You, however,
would find his state of mind unsatisfactorily confused and na\"{\i}ve.) As a result he bought and read (in part) your
\uline{Logische Syntax}\IC{\logischesyntax} when it appeared; and it was he \textkritik{(and, independently, \blockade{or} Rafael Demos\IN{\demos})}\fnE{Hsl.} who suggested to the
philosophy department last fall that I be asked to give some lectures on your doctrines. The particular set of
tercentenary lectures in which yours will occur was a subsequent idea of his own, and a couple of months ago he consulted
me on the notion of including you.

Another ally, valuable but somewhat less powerful than Henderson\IN{\henderson}, is \neueseite{} Charles P. Curtis\IN{\curtis}, dilettante and prominent Boston
lawyer, who is a trustee of Harvard\II{\harvard}. He is a follower of Henderson's\IN{\henderson} in the study of Pareto\IN{\pareto}, and co-author with Homans\IN{} in
a recent popular book \uline{Introduction to Pareto}\IW{}. Like Henderson\IN{\henderson} he is a sponsor of the Society of Fellows\II{\sof}, so that
I see him each week. Like Henderson he became interested in your work and read the not too technical portions of the
\uline{Logische Syntax}\IC{\logischesyntax}. He attended my lectures and is at present studying over the manuscript of them, together with
your new \uline{Philosophy and Logical Syntax}\IC{\londonervortraege}. He is very enthusiastic; and he has a vote and a persuasive voice in
university policy. He, like Henderson\IN{\henderson}, will be a strong factor in brightening the future.

Many thanks for the copy of your \uline{Philosophy and Logical Syntax}\IC{\londonervortraege}, a very fine little book, very well written, and
constituting an excellent simplified synopsis of your doctrine. The need of such a book\IC{\londonervortraege} has been made known to me again
and again since my lectures on your work: for laymen and semi-laymen have been asking to reread the manuscript of my
lectures, and urging me to bring out a little non-technical book \textkritik{in English}\fnE{Hsl.}, some sort of ``Introduction to Carnap,''
serving the same purpose. Your \uline{Philosophy and Logical Syntax}\IC{\londonervortraege} is therefore good news to many.

Thanks also for the offprint of your valuable article ``Die Antinomien etc.''\IC{\msantinomien} I am also very glad to have the duplicate
stock of \uline{Erkenntnis}\II{\erkenntnis} papers; I am reserving them for as judicious distribution as possible, hoping to place them
only where they will be studied and used most seriously. Incidentally I was happy to be able to appropriate a copy of the
``Protokollsätze''\IC{\protokollsaetze} paper for myself for I had lacked that paper, and am anxious to keep my Carnap library as complete as
possible.

Thanks, fourthly, for your painstaking and valuable commentary on my book\IW{\quinebuch}. I shall follow your numbering in commenting
on the comments.

1)2) It would surely have been well to present a rigorous development of the formative rules. But the policy which,
motivated by considerations of expository simplicity, I deliberately adopted in the book, was to present \neueseite{} as little in the
way of rigorous (and laborious) \uline{metamathematical} analysis as was compatible with moderately unconfused
expression of the \uline{logical} system. Such \uline{e.\,g.} was my reason for using the intuitive blanks ``---'',
``-\,-\,-'', ``\ldots{}'' etc. instead of introducing expression-variables. I even went so far as to suppress syntactic
expressions in favor of quoted logical expressions in many cases where I knew it to be strictly (if trivially)
\uline{incorrect} from a subtly syntactical point of view. On the same score, like Lewis\IN{\lewis} and \uline{Principia}\IW{\principiamathematica}, I left
the notion of \uline{significance} at an unanalyzed level of this sort; ``expressions constructible in terms of the
primitive signs, by the tacit but obvious rules of combination, restricted however by the conditions imposed by the
theory of types''; and I did not deliver myself explicitly even to the above extent. My attitude was that any reader
\uline{already} syntactically oriented could supply the wanted rigor by a routine application of the general methods
published by you, and, in a less thoroughgoing way, by Gödel\IN{\goedel}, Tarski\IN{\tarski}, etc.; and as for the not yet syntactically oriented
reader, I was not concerned in this book\IW{} with orienting him, nor did I want to exclude him by \uline{presupposing} his
orientation. But whether or not this elliptical procedure was ill-advised, my \uline{chief} mistake was in not including
the above remarks in the introduction!

3b) I do not see how this will make the convention on p.\,44 unnecessary, for that convention is required by the rule of
\uline{subsumption} rather than substitution.

3c) Quite right! This of course is tied up with my above remarks on 1)2).

4) Since in my book\IW{\quinebuch} I talk in a deliberatively quasi-syntactic idiom [because of what I have said concerning 1)2)], and
thus discuss for the most part \uline{elements} and \uline{operations} rather than primitive \uline{symbols}, I should
prefer this third method of dealing with parentheses: Let the parentheses be \uline{part}-of the symbolism of the
primitive and defined operations -- \uline{e.\,g.} let the symbolism of ordination and abstraction be respectively ``(\ldots{},\ldots{})'' and ``\blockade{Symbol}(\ldots{})'' rather than `` \ldots{},\ldots{}'' and ``\blockade{Symbol}(\ldots{})'' and then let certain parentheses be \neueseite{} dropped by
explicit convention. (I used this kind of procedure, different in detail, in my paper in last October's \uline{Bull.
Amer. Math. Soc.}\II{})\fnA{Original eckige Klammer} But it is true in any case that the point of view on p.\,51 is bad; an unnecessarily evil result of the
attitude explained above \uline{in re} 1)2).

8) I am very much pleased by your suggestion to eliminate operation signs as far as possible in favor of class-signs;
this would be a great advance in elegance, and would greatly simplify the syntax of the system and shorten the (mainly
tacit) syntactical rules. I am not sure that this would be worth the price of an extra primitive operation (classial)
correlation), but I should certainly favor carrying your process as far as it can be carried \uline{without}
paying that price. In any case the method could be applied to all operations defined \uline{after} classial
correlation, and definitions or primitives could be so shifted about and revised as to bring in classial
correlation very early. Still, this compromise procedure would fall short of the highly desirable principle that
\uline{all} defined symbols be class constants. But in whatever way these considerations may balance, the direction
(Richtung) suggested is an attractive one.

10) Thanks; I hadn't yet found that misprint. Here are some more: p.\,115, end of line\,19, add
``the''; p.\,163, third from last line, omit first ``of''; p.\,187, fourth from last line, for `` `` put `` ``;\blockade{2 Mal gleiche Anführungszeichen!?} p.\,200,
column 2, line 8, for ``negates'' put ``negate''; ninth line from end, for ``151'' put ``149''. Two of these mistakes I
had corrected on the proofs, and the printer overlooked the corrections; these of course are especially annoying.

A fifth object of thanks is your kindness in writing a review\IC{} of my book\IW{\quinebuch} for \uline{Erkenntnis}\II{\erkenntnis}, of which I am very
glad.

Three days ago I mailed you offprints of my reviews\IW{} of Peirce\IN{\peirce} III and IV\IW{}.

You are kind to suggest sending me your extra copy of my book\IW{\quinebuch}. I should like very much to have it for my own shelf, for,
strangely, I do not at present own a copy; I gave my last away and have not yet bought another. \neueseite{}

I suppose there is even at this late date a slight possibility of your being given an American offer for the coming
year. I like to hope so. But otherwise, since you must be here in any case in September 1936, can't you come in June 1936
and spend the summer in America instead of in the Tatra or the Tyrol? Whether or not we shall be at Harvard\II{\harvard} after
September 1936 (which, however, we almost certainly shall), in any case we shall be here that summer. We are impatient to
see you.

As soon as our present lease expires (end of this August) we plan to move out of the city, much as you have done in
Prague. We hope to move into an even less populous quarter, however, than Novi Motol; a definitely rural region. We must
of course be within about thirty minutes' transportation of the university, and I think that will be possible. Our reason
for moving is that we (especially I) can no longer endure the noise of radios, barking dogs and swarms of children. Hence
when you come you will find us much more pleasantly and comfortably situated than in our present crowded city flat. There
will be room, isolation and fresh air, and we will be able to take walks over the New England countryside at a moment's
notice without any preliminary transportation. For convenience in getting to the university an automobile will be
desirable; we shall probably have one by the time you come, and it will enable us all to make pleasant little trips
together.

You will find a third Quine\IN{\quinekind} when you come. Naomi\IN{\quinefrau} expects a baby five months from now.

With heartiest regards to both, also from Naomi\IN{\quinefrau}, and with an `auf Widersehen' this time in a
\uline{definiten Sprache},}

\grussformel{Cordially yours,\\{} 
[W.V.Q]}

\briefanhang{P.S. -- In speaking of your work, in English, I always say ``formative rule'' and ``transformative rule'', which strikes
the English ear as more elegant than ``formation rule'' and ``transformation rule''. Also I have tended of late to say
``formal (or material) \uline{idiom}''; the latter word emphasizes that it is a linguistic concept. However, ``mode'' is
not unsatisfactory -- indeed, I approved \neueseite{} ``mode'' in an earlier letter.

I see there are further points I have failed to touch, so I shall continue this postscript.

It is clear that the very slight change which you suggest for the last line of p.\,178 of your \uline{Syntax}\IC{\logischesyntax} completely
surmounts the difficulty I had raised.

Whitehead's\IN{\whitehead} new scheme, though still fragmentary, has now been published in a fuller form than I had been able to give
it in my short synopsis; namely, see Whitehead's\IN{\whitehead} article\IW{} in \uline{Mind}\II{\mind} XLIII (NS) pp.\,281-297. It is full of
misprints, for Whitehead\IN{\whitehead} was too ill to read proofs when they reached them; but you will be able to decipher the errors
-- \uline{e.\,g}. ``$\exists$'' should be inverted iota at top of p.\,287; the sign of logical addition should be replaced
by the sign of inclusion at various points on p.\,286.

Although Whitehead's\IN{\whitehead} scheme depends (as does my \uline{Logistic}\IW{\quinebuch}) upon construing propositional \uline{identity} in a
much stronger way than as mere sameness of truth-value, still (as in my system) there is no trace of anything approaching
Lewis'\IN{\lewis} modality functions. Perhaps his notion of propositional identity would (unlike mine) turn out to approach Lewis'\IN{\lewis}
``strict equivalence'' if Whitehead\IN{\whitehead} were to enlarge upon the topic; but this is purely speculative, since neither
postulates nor discussion are as yet forthcoming to determine this aspect. Such verbal questions as I have put to
Whitehead\IN{\whitehead} on the subject have led only into metaphysical mazes; yet he will no doubt purge the finished product of any
considerable metaphysical ingredients, as he has hitherto done in his technical logical writings.

I am glad of your connection with Morris\IN{\morris} of Chicago -- his efforts will add to the chances of your being brought to
America a year early. As to the year \uline{after} next, of course, I am thoroughly confident that you will be here to
stay.

Prall\IN{\prall} and I were of course both disappointed that he could not translate the \uline{Syntax}\IC{\logischesyntax}, but I gave him to
understand fully that the decision was Ogden's\IN{\ogden} and counter to your wishes and protests.

I enclose corrected copies of your recent letters. Your English is becoming very good. Practically all the corrections
are of idiom rather than grammar, and the idiom itself is vastly improved.

Following your kind suggestion I also enclose a copy of my last letter for correction of the German.}

\grussformel{With further greetings,\\
W. V. Q}

\ebericht{Brief, msl., 6 Seiten, \href{https://doi.org/10.48666/854830}{WQ}; Briefkopf: msl. \original{52 Garden Street \,/\, Cambridge, Mass. \,/\, March\,31, 1935}.}
