Expertise in an out-of-the-way place

Willard Van Orman Quine was among the greatest philosophers of the 20^th century. He once was on the receiving end of one of the world’s great philosophical jokes.

Quine wrote on the philosophy of logic and language.

He taught at Harvard, and one of his doctoral students, Dagfinn Føllesdal, a Norwegian, later taught at Stanford and at the University of Oslo.

Quine visited Norway in 1972. Føllesdal was his host.

Quine wanted to visit the far North, the land of the Sami people. Unknown to Quine, Føllesdal had supervised the master’s thesis of a young Sami philosopher who studied Quine’s philosophy.

Føllesdal arranged for the young man to stand by the side of the road at Kautokeino, a town north of the Arctic Circle, and offer to show the visitors around.

The young man impressed Quine.

First, there was the young man’s mastery of English.

And then, when the conversation turned to the topic of philosophy in general, there was the cultural level. How did one who lived in such an isolated place know so much about some of the world’s great thinkers?

When the conversation turned to the philosophy of language, Quine knew he’d been had. As Føllesdal put, Quine soon realized he was talking to the world’s northernmost expert on the philosophy of Willard Van Orman Quine.

It’s a good story. Dagfinn Føllesdal’s told it in “W.V. Quine Remembered,” The Harvard Review of Philosophy, IX, 2001, pp. 106-11.