Willard van Orman Quine, a Harvard professor who was one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century, died on Dec. 25 at age 92. He lived in Boston.

Quine led the second golden age of the Harvard philosophy department along with John Rawls, the political theorist, and philosophers Stanley Cavell and Hillary Putnam, according to Warren Goldfarb, Pearson professor of modern mathematics and mathematical logic. (During the first golden age, at the turn of the century, the department was led by Henry James, Josiah Royce and George Santayana.)

"He had just a commanding position in American philosophy," said Goldfarb, who knew Quine as a member of the Society of Fellows, as a professor and as a student. "This is what set new directions in philosophy."

Quine argued that philosophy was continuous with science, not a separate, privileged field that could provide an independent foundation for other areas of study.

He tried to integrate rigorous study of logic and language with philosophy to discover what humans can know and how they can know it.

A summa cum laude graduate of Oberlin College, Quine came to Harvard to earn his Ph.D. in philosophy and stayed for the rest of his career, aside from a stint as a Navy cryptographer during World War II and his travels around the globe (he spoke half a dozen languages and visited over 100 countries.)

Spurred by the economic uncertainty of the depression, Quine earned his Ph.D. in just two years under the supervision of leading philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.

In 1932, he went to Europe for four years on a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship, then returned to Harvard as a member of the newly-formed Society of Fellows. At that time, other members of the prestigious group--which funds three years of research and study--included Whitehead, A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, the former Harvard president who founded the organization, B.F. Skinner, the behavioral scientist, and Nathan Pusey, who later became president of Harvard.