Noam Chomsky

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Lots of people read Chomsky. Some don't.

Noam Chomsky is a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at M.I.T., wobbly, and a libertarian socialist intellectual and political dissident. He is usually identified with the rationalist or nativist tradition in psychology.

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[edit] Linguistics and psychology

Chomsky has made important contributions to the field of linguistics, most prominently his ideas of generative grammar (in which the grammar of a language is described by sets of rules transforming one grammatical construct into another) and the Chomsky hierarchy, classifying languages based on restrictions imposed upon the form of these rules. Several of the classes of grammars in the Chomsky hierarchy have proven useful in computer science, so next time you write a regular expression, you'll know whom to thank.[1]

His work in the philosophy of linguistics and the philosophy of mind made him one of the leading figures of the cognitive revolution. This contributed so greatly to the field of psychology that he was listed the 38th most influential figure in the 20th century in the field in the Review of General Psychology despite his specialization in linguistics.[2]

Chomsky argued against the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner on the topic of language acquisition. One of his most famous arguments is the "poverty of the stimulus," i.e. that children acquire language with insufficient input from the environment for language to be learned entirely by a behaviorist stimulus-response mechanism. This argument remains a topic of some controversy, especially among pscyhologists and linguists that take a more empiricist approach.[3] Chomsky posited an innate "language acquisition device," a "mental organ" that allowed for the derivation of syntactical structure and grammatical rules of language.[4] These phenomena were thought to play a central role in a "Universal Grammar."[5] However, Chomsky has backed off some of his harder claims in recent times, reformulating generative grammar in terms of what became known as the "minimalist program."[6] Some empiricist critics of Chomsky, such as Michael Tomasello, maintain that language does have a biological basis, but that this basis is in the ability to imitate rather than in any mechanisms specifically designed for verbal language.[7]

[edit] Politics

Chomsky is also well-known for his political commentary. He is a regular contributor to Z Magazine and its online outlet Z Communications.[8] which is a Left Anarchist news source. Perhaps his most famous political book is his criticism of the media, Manufacturing Consent, co-authored with Edward S. Herman. The book shares its title with a documentary film[9] that has become a popular introductory text to Chomsky's work, despite the fact Chomsky gets somewhat annoyed with the film[10]. He has also written dozens of books critical of United States foreign policy. At a 2006 UN session, Hugo Chavez recommended Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival as an important text on the subject of American imperialism, giving the author some renewed publicity.[11]

Chomsky is not a fan of postmodernism,[12] going as far as to compare postmodernist critiques of "white male science" to the Deutsche Physik of Nazi Germany and its attack on "Jewish physics".

Chomsky does not accept the conspiracy theory surrounding the September 11 attacks,[13] and regards the Federal Reserve, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group as being organisations of no real significance or threat. This has led to many wingnut conspiracy theorists arguing that Chomsky is in fact a tool of the New World Order, being used to brainwash the masses into accepting leftist ideas. Or something like that. A few members of conspiracy idiot squad We Are Change even once went to the extent of protesting a Chomsky speaking engagement, expressing these sentiments.[14]

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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