William James ...

I often explain the views of W.V.O. Quine in a neo-positivist perspective, but there is also a strong sense in which Quine lies in the lineage of Pragmatism. Here is a quote from William James which has very much a Quinian ring to it.

This quote was published (or, rather, actually, presented in lecture) about the time Quine was born.

... "Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe itself. 'God,' 'Matter,' 'Reason,' 'the Absolute,' 'Energy,' are so many solving names. You can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest.
But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which realities may be changed.
Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest." [James' use of the commas in that last sentence, not mine. I would have said "Theories thus become instruments. They are not answers, in which we can rest, to enigmas." Really, i would have.]

I think of this passage as an excellent explanation of the attack on the human propensity to think that because they have named something, object or theory, that they have answered any question at all. Newton's Universal Gravity is a(n) (approximate) mathematical functionally equivalent statement to what is going on in our physical world. It is not an answer to a question. It is a parallel statement that elucidates and helps make predictions. It is a tool.