The logical positivists denounced ontology as a branch of metaphysics that is either trivial or meaningless. Proper philosophy refrains from competing with science by making claims about reality. Instead, it turns into the ‘logic of science’, a second-order investigation into the conceptual framework of the empirical sciences. When Heidegger held forth about ‘Being’ and ‘Nothing’, Carnap had no problem in showing that it involved a linguistic blunder, a case of mistaking quantifiers for names of peculiar objects. But from the fifties onward, attitudes changed. Instead of having a good laugh about Heidegger's ‘The Nothing noths’, analytic philosophers took up ontology themselves, and with a vengeance. It is generally assumed that ontology deals with two problems which are more fundamental than those of epistemology, semantics or even logic: What kinds of things exist? What is the nature or essence of these kinds?

Quine was the first and most influential force behind the rise of analytic ontology. Prima facie, this is ironical. For Quine is ‘no champion of traditional metaphysics’. Like the logical positivists, he would regard the idea that ontology studies Being as based on reification. He denies that a priori philosophical reflection can establish what kinds of things there are, and he ridicules the idea that philosophers are capable of getting essences into the cross hairs of their intellectual periscopes. Nevertheless, Quine finds a use for ‘the crusty old word’ which he regards as nuclear to its traditional employment (WP 203–4).