Biting off more than I can Chomp?
"Noam Chomsky might be the most significant intellectual of the 20th Cent."
That's the rap this professor of linguistic and philosophy at MIT gets on just about every book he has ever written. His bread and butter is his theory that the human brain has an innate language faculty and he calls this part of our biological make up 'universal grammar', a theory of principles common to all languages. His book, 'Syntatic Structures' was a "turning point on 20th century linguistics" and "epoch making". When was the last thing I did that was epoch making? I would even settle for a 'turning point'.
If your about to click to another blog with some quirky story of how a guys kid fell off the bed, don't. Well, not quite yet.
The other thing Chomsky is famous for (and this is what I'm interested in) is as an academic who rigorously criticzed social injustice and state violence. Guess what country he spends most of his time sweating over? That's right, the good old U S of A. Now it needs to be said from the outset, this is not consipricy theory stuff or emotionally charged witch hunts. This is one of the smartest guys in America. His stuff on linguists leaves me completely confused, but his stuff on empire building, power and justice , well . . . .It rocks.
Ok, this post is already almost too long for the casual surf, but let me just give you a taste that will hopefully develop you an appetite for a meal of Chomsky. He observes, "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post war (WII) American President would have been hanged."
Want to know why?
Read some Chomsky.Visit www.chomsky.info
Scott
2 comments:
With regards to Chomsky's linguistic theories the book called "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker (another MIT guy) is a really well written account of these same ideas. His account of language contains very serious criticisms of a post modern world view and of the ideas presented by modern educationalists and social scientists... so it's an interesting read.
Ben
Scott, if you like Chomsky for his Social Justice stuff and his insights into the US of A, i bet you like Jim Wallis and Sojourners - read about him at http://sojo.net - I’m half way through his book 'God's Politics' - well worth a read if you can get your hands on it - he speaks a lot about Bishop Tutu and the Apartheid struggle as a reason to not be cynical about the current injustices which he is fighting
Post a Comment