From A Logial Point of View Better Marry a Woman Uglier than You

From A Logical Point of View
Better marry a woman uglier than you

It is better to be first with an ugly woman
than the hundredth with a beauty.
Pearl S. Buck "The Good Earth" 1931

Geschichte eines Songs – History of a Song

Ugly Woman (Lion - Hubert R.Charles)
A traditional calypso song from West India by The Roaring Lion (a.k.a. Hubert Raphael Charles)

Marry A Woman Uglier Than You - The Duke of Iron; AFRS Jubilee #9: Los Angeles, Januar 1943
auf CD "Let's Have A Ball Tonight": The Pioneers of Rhythm & Blues - Natasha Imports NI-4025

Willard van Orman Quine: From A Logial Point of View 1953. Cambridge: Harvard - 1961 2nd edition;1963 Spanish edition; 1966 Italian edition; 1970 Polish edition; 1972 Japanese edition; 1979 German edition; 1988 Chinese edition
Willard van Orman Quine holds the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University. Over the last half century his literary output has been prodigious in such areas a logic, metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of logic. His best known works include "The Ways of Paradox", "Mathematical Logic", "Set Theory and Its Logic", "Quiddities", and perhaps most influential and significant "Word and Object". His style is not only eminently lucid but lively and elegant.

From A Logical Point of View (Lion - Hubert R.Charles) - Robert Mitchum; Hollywood, Calif., 20.Feb.1957
auf CD That Man - Bear Family BCD 15 890 AF

If You Wanna Be Happy (Guida - Royster) - Jimmy Soul; 1963 #1 Billboard Charts
USA: S.P.Q.R., Deutschland: Columbia C22 424
Im Text heißt es nun "from my personal point of view", die ursprünglichen Songschreiber verschwanden!

Antwort von Dr.Doug Quine, son of Dr.W.v.O.Quine

Yes, you are correct, there is a connection. When out at a night club with some Philosophy colleagues, my father heard this song sung by Harry Belafonte and they agreed that the line would make an excellent book title. The event is described in W.V.Quine's autobiography: The Times of My Life.

Aus dem Vorwort zu From A Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 1996: "Henry Aiken and I were with our wives in a Greenwich Village nightspot when I told him of the plan, and Harry Belafonte had just sung the calypso 'From a logical point of view.' Henry noted that this would do nicely as a title for the volume, and so it did."

Philosophische

Themen –

W.v.O.Quine