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Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics
A fresh and fascinating look at the philosophies, politics, and intellectual legacy of one of the twentieth century’s most influential and controversial minds
Occupying a pivotal position in postwar thought, Noam Chomsky is both the founder of modern linguistics and the world’s most prominent political dissident. Chris Knight adopts an anthropologist’s perspective on the twin output of this intellectual giant, acclaimed as much for his denunciations of US foreign policy as for his theories about language and mind. Knight explores the social and institutional context of Chomsky’s thinking, showing how the tension between military funding and his role as linchpin of the political left pressured him to establish a disconnect between science on the one hand and politics on the other, deepening a split between mind and body characteristic of Western philosophy since the Enlightenment. Provocative, fearless, and engaging, this remarkable study explains the enigma of one of the greatest intellectuals of our time.
Occupying a pivotal position in postwar thought, Noam Chomsky is both the founder of modern linguistics and the world’s most prominent political dissident. Chris Knight adopts an anthropologist’s perspective on the twin output of this intellectual giant, acclaimed as much for his denunciations of US foreign policy as for his theories about language and mind. Knight explores the social and institutional context of Chomsky’s thinking, showing how the tension between military funding and his role as linchpin of the political left pressured him to establish a disconnect between science on the one hand and politics on the other, deepening a split between mind and body characteristic of Western philosophy since the Enlightenment. Provocative, fearless, and engaging, this remarkable study explains the enigma of one of the greatest intellectuals of our time.
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 9, 2018
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178 people want to read
About the author
Chris Knight
63 books23 followersProfessor Knight gained his PhD in 1987 for a thesis on Claude Lévi-Strauss's four-volume 'Mythologiques'. He became a lecturer in anthropology at the University of East London in 1989. Knight is a founding member of the "Radical Anthropology Group". He is currently a senior research fellow at University College London.
Since 1966, Knight has been exploring the idea that language and symbolic culture emerged in the human species through a process of Darwinian evolution culminating at a certain point in revolutionary change. Becoming human was, according to this theory, a classic instance of a dialectical process, i.e. one in which quantitative change culminates eventually in a qualitative leap.
In 1996, Knight co-founded the EVOLANG series of international conferences on the origins of language, since when he has become a prominent figure in debates on the origins of human symbolic culture and especially the origin of language.
Since 1966, Knight has been exploring the idea that language and symbolic culture emerged in the human species through a process of Darwinian evolution culminating at a certain point in revolutionary change. Becoming human was, according to this theory, a classic instance of a dialectical process, i.e. one in which quantitative change culminates eventually in a qualitative leap.
In 1996, Knight co-founded the EVOLANG series of international conferences on the origins of language, since when he has become a prominent figure in debates on the origins of human symbolic culture and especially the origin of language.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 26, 2019
Chomskyan linguistics is truly bizarre, not as an idea so much, but as an institution. It is effectively a trumped up form of mathematics and formal logic claiming to make discoveries about the brain and genetics on the basis of parsing grammar, that is, without actually looking at the brain or genetics (the science of which barely existed when Chomsky made his first claims, but whose findings Chomsky and his minions have never ceased trying to spin as supporting their linguistic ideologies, all while claiming to be free of ideology in their linguistic work).
I think that a large part of the skepticism directed toward people like Knight, Evans, and Everett stems from trust in scientific institutions and disbelief that someone as respected as Noam Chomsky could be not only so wrong but also so stubborn and petty (for another example, in Why Only Us: Language and Evolution, Chomsky and Berwick criticize use of the word "evolution" to describe anything but the process of natural selection, presumably because people who use the word this way tend to be critics of Chomsky, but then a few pages later use it in the very sense that they had just criticized). But Knight provides in this book the best account yet of the historical context from which Chomsky’s linguistics emerged. Those who care about the reputation of truth and science would do well to heed the lessons of how a scientific discipline can go so far off the rails.
It’s beyond poetic that a man who has spent decades denigrating and hurling mean names at “social constructionists” is increasingly being recognized as having been near irredeemably misguided by the intellectual traditions of his time. Knight describes how many of Chomsky’s foundational assumptions and definitions of language are rooted in the philosophy of Descartes and other misguided ideas about the nature of mind, namely the idea that the brain can be understood as a traditional computer, all of which were popular among scientists and engineers at the time, but which have increasingly been recognized as wrong, unhelpful, or even an obstacle to scientific and technological advancement by people in a variety of disciplines, including neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and artificial intelligence (although for Descartes the brain was a clock; which just further serves to illustrate how these machine metaphors of the mind are cultural products, not scientific truths). This, of course, hasn't stopped Chomsky from attacking those fields, such as people working on natural language processing, about which he is a most unreliable narrator.
I’m guessing that because they know that critiques like Knight’s are damaging their credibility, Chomsky and minions would sooner have nobody read their critics. This is central to how they’ve always operated, however: make bold proclamations without evidence and attack anyone (read: drag their reputation through the mud and try to destroy their career) who challenges Chomsky rather than use the contentions of other perspectives as opportunities to test and validate these proclamations through empirical demonstration, as one would in other scientific disciplines. They also typically bend over backwards to spin (often, other people's) empirical findings in their favor, and then of course subject alternative and more logically sound interpreters to ridicule and scorn in their pet journals and places like the Chomsky-worship Reddit page. This might seem shocking or unbelievable if you have placed faith in Chomsky or idolized him as a hero, but it is unfortunately true that idolized “geniuses” (almost always straight white dudes) rarely live up to their reputations.
Hume warned in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that “philosophers” should be cautious about making bold claims about the causes of phenomena that are beyond the means of their knowledge. Despite routinely spinning Hume’s thought as supporting his own, Chomsky seems to have done a terrible job of heeding the lesson. If, I may sum that lesson up, synthesizing Hume, Chomsky, and Knight, it's that if you're going to make triumphant-sounding claims about the underlying nature of reality in the form of simple declarative sentences ("X is Z," as opposed to "we propose that X is Z," or something), don't be a dick about it, especially not if all you have are ideas lacking empirical evidence. All in all, books like Knight's, as well as older accounts of acrimony among researchers under Chomsky's rule such as that in Seuren's Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction, can demonstrate the intemperate scorn and ridicule with which Chomsky has behaved toward others, while also documenting how challengers have always been shutdown. So, if you see people acting with anger and animosity toward Chomsky and his followers, you should know that they had it coming. And you if you encounter them spluttering with rage and invective about the "charlatans," "liars," and "imbeciles," who dare to "defame" their master by speaking the truth, you can safely dismiss them as abusive, gas-lighting assholes.
I think that a large part of the skepticism directed toward people like Knight, Evans, and Everett stems from trust in scientific institutions and disbelief that someone as respected as Noam Chomsky could be not only so wrong but also so stubborn and petty (for another example, in Why Only Us: Language and Evolution, Chomsky and Berwick criticize use of the word "evolution" to describe anything but the process of natural selection, presumably because people who use the word this way tend to be critics of Chomsky, but then a few pages later use it in the very sense that they had just criticized). But Knight provides in this book the best account yet of the historical context from which Chomsky’s linguistics emerged. Those who care about the reputation of truth and science would do well to heed the lessons of how a scientific discipline can go so far off the rails.
It’s beyond poetic that a man who has spent decades denigrating and hurling mean names at “social constructionists” is increasingly being recognized as having been near irredeemably misguided by the intellectual traditions of his time. Knight describes how many of Chomsky’s foundational assumptions and definitions of language are rooted in the philosophy of Descartes and other misguided ideas about the nature of mind, namely the idea that the brain can be understood as a traditional computer, all of which were popular among scientists and engineers at the time, but which have increasingly been recognized as wrong, unhelpful, or even an obstacle to scientific and technological advancement by people in a variety of disciplines, including neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and artificial intelligence (although for Descartes the brain was a clock; which just further serves to illustrate how these machine metaphors of the mind are cultural products, not scientific truths). This, of course, hasn't stopped Chomsky from attacking those fields, such as people working on natural language processing, about which he is a most unreliable narrator.
I’m guessing that because they know that critiques like Knight’s are damaging their credibility, Chomsky and minions would sooner have nobody read their critics. This is central to how they’ve always operated, however: make bold proclamations without evidence and attack anyone (read: drag their reputation through the mud and try to destroy their career) who challenges Chomsky rather than use the contentions of other perspectives as opportunities to test and validate these proclamations through empirical demonstration, as one would in other scientific disciplines. They also typically bend over backwards to spin (often, other people's) empirical findings in their favor, and then of course subject alternative and more logically sound interpreters to ridicule and scorn in their pet journals and places like the Chomsky-worship Reddit page. This might seem shocking or unbelievable if you have placed faith in Chomsky or idolized him as a hero, but it is unfortunately true that idolized “geniuses” (almost always straight white dudes) rarely live up to their reputations.
Hume warned in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that “philosophers” should be cautious about making bold claims about the causes of phenomena that are beyond the means of their knowledge. Despite routinely spinning Hume’s thought as supporting his own, Chomsky seems to have done a terrible job of heeding the lesson. If, I may sum that lesson up, synthesizing Hume, Chomsky, and Knight, it's that if you're going to make triumphant-sounding claims about the underlying nature of reality in the form of simple declarative sentences ("X is Z," as opposed to "we propose that X is Z," or something), don't be a dick about it, especially not if all you have are ideas lacking empirical evidence. All in all, books like Knight's, as well as older accounts of acrimony among researchers under Chomsky's rule such as that in Seuren's Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction, can demonstrate the intemperate scorn and ridicule with which Chomsky has behaved toward others, while also documenting how challengers have always been shutdown. So, if you see people acting with anger and animosity toward Chomsky and his followers, you should know that they had it coming. And you if you encounter them spluttering with rage and invective about the "charlatans," "liars," and "imbeciles," who dare to "defame" their master by speaking the truth, you can safely dismiss them as abusive, gas-lighting assholes.
November 29, 2019
It's an odd book. When I started reading it, I felt as if it was all a big joke. Like, "the author can't really believe all of this, can he?" But, as it turns out, many of the things that Chomsky has defended in linguistic theory, often without almost any body of evidence at all, are presented in an interesting narrative here. It's a refreshing read. Chomsky is an interesting and important character in the history of linguistics, but the field needs a complete paradigm shift.
December 18, 2021
While I generally agree with his impatience for Chomskyan linguistics, such a profoundly misguided idea, the book itself is nothing but a hodgepodge of psychoanalytic speculation, misapplied quotations, and cherry picked examples with no attempt to produce a balanced outlook. It also suffers from a surprising lack of depth. While I do feel like I've a more solid understanding of what it was I always found so distasteful about the Chomskyan turn in linguistics, especially with its lack of interest in the real world, and while the last few chapters did start to soften my views on the book as a whole, I can't give it anything more than two stars.
May 2, 2021
As a lifelong reader of Chomsky’s political analysis, I found this book fascinating but frustrating. Knight is one of the rare intellectuals who would criticIze Chomsky from the left, but it isn’t for his politics so much as his linguistics, or more precisely the way in which one informs the other, despite Chomsky’s repeated insistence there is little to no connection. Knight does a good job placing the development of Chomsky’s linguistics in a historical context, but his attempts to dispute his linguistic theories fall flat for me. Some of Knight’s critique seems more to come from his different academic training (in anthropology) than anything else, although I could be mistaken. While I’m certainly open to a critique of Chomsky’s linguistics (universal grammar and Cartesianism are hard for me to buy into), I don’t know if Knight is successful, as he often falls into speculation about Chomsky’s psychological motivations despite Knight’s Marxism.
Anyway, I’d still recommend the book to people like myself who have read a lot of Chomsky‘a political work, it provides some context and analysis of his linguistics that I had been less familiar with.
Anyway, I’d still recommend the book to people like myself who have read a lot of Chomsky‘a political work, it provides some context and analysis of his linguistics that I had been less familiar with.
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January 31, 2022gift from Bart!
just read the first chapter for now
he is focused on hidden motivators (funding) and takes issue with Chomsky's apparently changeable hypotheses as if this were a bad thing in and of itself.
just read the first chapter for now
he is focused on hidden motivators (funding) and takes issue with Chomsky's apparently changeable hypotheses as if this were a bad thing in and of itself.
March 5, 2020
An academic bureaucrat writing a hagiography to reinforce the control of the establishment over the mere mortals.
December 20, 2023
Minus one star for the boring, inconsistant, introductory chapters. The book gets interesting after all, especially when it comes to entropology.
August 23, 2024
I hate him, I hate him so much
June 27, 2025
Wow!!!!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews