Thursday, December 4, 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen, Once Again... The Great Noam Chomsky

Any article entitled He Found the Innate Humanity of The Human Brain is bound to attract me, more so when it's about Noam Chomsky (of whom I am an unashamed fan).

His observations, which grew out of his opposition to the Vietnam War and, later, what he saw as the United States’ resorting to violence and other forms of coercion and domination abroad, thrust him into the spotlight and have made him one of the top pundits and gadflies of the day.

Come on, I wanna be a gadfly. What do I have to do?

One reason for Chomsky’s enormous influence in both the “hard” and social sciences may be his willingness to share ideas and his embrace of open debate. “I don’t want any followers,” Chomsky once told an interviewer. “My message, especially to students, is that they shouldn’t be following anyone.”

Noam Chomsky stands in the tradition of the great Enlightenment thinkers who combined a sweeping intellectual vision with meticulous technical analyses. He revived a rationalist conception of human nature in which the mind is richly endowed with creative powers at a time when behaviorism ruled and “innate” was a dirty word.

Oh, that's what you have to do? Oh well, back to rapping I suppose...

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