In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our ...

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is asocial art.

Alternative models of idealized scientific inquiry are investigated and compared. Particular attention is devoted to paradigms in which a scientist is required to determine the truth of a given sentence in the structure giving rise to his data.

A model of idealized scientific inquiry is presented in which scientists are required to infer the nature of the structure that makes true the data they examine. A necessary and sufficient condition is presented for scientific success within this paradigm.