Sunday, November 21, 2004
Noam Chomsky Was Once Right
This is taken from the follow up to one of the most revealing (and tasty) academic parodies of our time. The payoff quote:
George Orwell once remarked that political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters. That's true, unfortunately, and it's part of the reason that our society lacks a genuine, responsible, serious left-wing movement.
It's just too easy to pick on Chomsky now. But is is both sobering and sad to think about the fact that he was once so right.
BTW, I actually studied transformational grammars in the early 70's. It was a trivial process for anyone with a reasonable mathematical background. At the time I thought I might be able to excell in a new scientific area, but I learned pretty quickly that the folks involved were not the least bit interested in science - only the cache' of the scientist.
¶ 01:44
George Orwell once remarked that political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters. That's true, unfortunately, and it's part of the reason that our society lacks a genuine, responsible, serious left-wing movement.
It's just too easy to pick on Chomsky now. But is is both sobering and sad to think about the fact that he was once so right.
BTW, I actually studied transformational grammars in the early 70's. It was a trivial process for anyone with a reasonable mathematical background. At the time I thought I might be able to excell in a new scientific area, but I learned pretty quickly that the folks involved were not the least bit interested in science - only the cache' of the scientist.
¶ 01:44
