Abstract

The ontological question goes way back to Plato. In his Teetetus he already searched for the answer to question of “how is it possible that when a man stares at something he would not see anything anyway”. Quine is the author of a doctrine on ontology, “On what there is”. His work follows the path of medieval authors such as William of Ockham, who proposed the methodology that came to be known as Okcham's razor. The excessive proliferation of entities is known as “Plato's beard”. Quine, among others, has shaved Plato's beard searching for logical and scientific simplicity.