Re: OFF-TOPIC: Non linguistics books by Chomsky

This is really the last straw! You and Tom and Ray etc. don't get it, do
you? Could all the idiots who keep trying to politicize this board,
academic politics or any other kind, FUCK OFF !!!

No Cross, No Crown, No Puke Green Star!

On Sat, 22 May 2004 17:23:13 -0500, Mark P. Line <mark@...>
wrote:

>Steve Cooney said:
>> --- "Mark P. Line" <mark@...> wrote:
>> "It usually makes sense to read just the latest
>> Chomsky book, as it tends to recapitulate (with
>> corrections) the earlier books."
>>
>>> It's sort of like changing your codpiece in public.
>>
>> In light of this above sentiment, I wonder if the
>> subject of this thread would better be generalized to
>> something like "Changing One's Mind: Good or Bad?" or
>> "Making Corrections: Sign of a Flawed Charachter?"
>>
>> If there are any merits at all for the notion of
>> 'never admitting a mistake' (especially for public
>> figures), then I will leave it to others to claim
>> them.
>
>These are two different things, and I think you're confusing the one with
>the other -- almost certainly merely a lack of information on your part.
>
>(1) A scholar publishes theoretical results, changes his mind in light of
>vigorous debate, and publishes corrected results. The scholar repeats this
>process several times over the course of half a century.
>
>(2) A scholar publishes theoretical results, attracting a zealous cadre of
>Followers. Non-Followers are usually not allowed to present papers at LSA
>meetings, and when they are, they are heckled boisterously and obnoxiously
>by the Followers while they are trying to give their paper. The scholar
>then changes his mind in light of vigorous debate among the Followers, and
>publishes corrected results. The new results then define the changed
>acceptance conditions on presentations to the LSA conference (and
>publication in all Follower-reviewed journals); further heckling of token
>Non-Follower presentations ensues. The scholar repeats this process
>several times over the course of half a century. At the quarter-century
>mark, the Non-Followers organize their own alternative to the LSA, their
>own journals, their own conferences -- effectively bifurcating the field
>of linguistics in North America.
>
>
>Situations like (1) warrant no further comment, because they are an
>everyday part of theory development.
>
>Situations like (2), exemplified at its most egregious by Chomsky and his
>Followers, warrant comments such as "it's like changing your codpiece in
>public".
>
>(The codpiece metaphor referred, in addition, to Chomsky's pattern of
>making the broadest imaginable Cartesian-deductive theoretical claims,
>then reducing these claims in the next iteration in a way that makes the
>earlier, unsubstantiated claims *seem* more-or-less justified but merely
>and unfortunately slightly overstated. Taken all at once, it becomes
>apparent that the suffocatingly enormous codpiece of Chomsky (1957) and
>(1965) had to be replaced by successively smaller ones, because people
>just weren't buying it. Most Followers now seem satisfied with his
>Minimalist codpiece, but there's always the chance he'll remove it
>altogether...)
>
>
>-- Mark

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