Don't Believe Everything You Read

That goes without saying — or does it?



Robert Pearson referred me to a website on which it is claimed that W. V. Quine invented "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny," a corruption of Ernst Haeckel's "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."



That is just plain wrong. There are three sayings that need distinguishing:



1. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

2. Ontology recapitulates philology.

3. Ontology recapitulates phylogeny.



(1) is Haeckel's dictum. (2) is attributed by Quine to James Grier Miller and appears on p. viii of Quine's Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960). (3) is a confusion certainly not attributable to the learned and precise Quine.



(1) is used by Quine but not in Haeckel's sense. Unfortunately, after much fruitless thumbing, I cannot find an exact reference in Quine's works. (Can someone help me here?) The sense Quine has in mind is that the ontogenesis of reference (the subject matter of Word and Object, Ch. III) recapitulates the phylogenesis of reference. Thus we are not talking evolutionary biology here, we are talking philosophy of language.



The moral to be drawn from this is encapusalted in the Latin, Caveat lector! Reader beware! That, along with Caveat emptor! (Buyer beware!) ought to be tatooed onto one's forearms for easy reference.



Never enter a business transaction without reflecting on Caveat emptor, and never read anything, on the Web or off, without bringing Caveat lector before your mind.



The Web is a wonderful tool, but it is also a rich source of minsinformation, disinformation, and much worse. Finding something via a Google search proves nothing. I was amazed a while back by a blogger who defended a spelling of a word by saying that it had turned up in a Google search. That is idiotic since eventually every corruption of every word and phrase will be enshrined in some dark corner of cyberspace.



Type 'Robert Reininger' into your favorite search engine. You may find a reference to your humble correspondent near or at the top of the dog pile. Does that mean that I am an expert on Reininger? Of course not. Which is not to say that I object to being 'top dog.'



Caveat lector!

Comments

[Robert]

Caveat lector, indeed. I'm glad I was precise enough to use the phrase "often attributed to Quine." Of possible further interest to language lovers is this NRO piece by Jonah Goldberg wherein "...Cookie Monster’s ontology..." is discussed.