Ontology Quotes

• The variables of quantification, 'something,' 'nothing,' 'everything,' range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.

  

  Willard Van Orman Quine
  • May
  • Existence
  • Order

• Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics;we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.

  

  Willard Van Orman Quine
  • Thinking
  • Acceptance
  • Physics

• What is necessary is that epistemology, instead of being the pre-condition for ontology, should grow in it and with it, being at the same time a means and an object of explanation, helping to uphold, and itself upheld by, ontology, as the parts of any true philosophy mutually will sustain each other.

  

  Etienne Gilson
  • Philosophy
  • Explanation
  • Epistemology

• There's something in the Western mind that gets very nervous when you try to talk about the bedrock of ontology.

  

  Terence McKenna
  • Mind
  • Trying
  • Nervous