Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy » John Williamson

Why Chomsky’s Linguistic Theory Has To Be Wrong

John Williamson — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 12:30:02 +0000

Some people master all of a language's various structures relatively quickly, some get most of it but miss a few things, and some never gain much mastery over language.

One of the problems in criticizing Chomskyan theory in linguistics is that it can be a bit . . . well, arcane. The terminology is not very accessible [...]

Noam Chomsky: America’s Village Idiot

John Williamson — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:51:09 +0000

Some of Chomsky’s most important claims cannot reasonably be considered scientific achievements at all.

In this article I discuss the nature of scientific inquiry. I want to show that the standards of achievement for serious scientists such as the physicist Albert Einstein are far higher than those of MIT’s professor of linguistics, Noam Chomsky. In [...]

Noam Chomsky and the Little Green Men

John Williamson — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 12:05:33 +0000

When you consider how much Chomsky can see in language which nobody else can seem to find, you realize the degree to which Chomsky truly is the intellectual heir of Percival Lowell.

Some of those who follow the career of Noam Chomsky see him as an outsize figure, larger in scale than any of [...]

Chomsky Speaks, West Point Yawns

John Williamson — Mon, 15 May 2006 02:45:51 +0000

One wonders whether, when Chomsky was asked to speak at Westpoint, he recalled his statement that the Pentagon is "the most hideous institution on this earth" and, if so, whether he made the connection that the Pentagon has always been run by those whose values were shaped at West Point and its fellow service academies.

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