dvunkannon
Posts: 1377
Joined: June 2008
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| Quote (CeilingCat @ Aug. 10 2010,19:57) | She starts with a setup that almost makes sense: "Some have wondered whether Noam Chomsky was a friend to Darwinism." Then she turns to one of her favorite tropes: "A friend in linguistics kindly writes,"Chomsky made many anti-Darwinian comments, as in his “Language and Mind,” and his critique of B. F. Skinner’s “Verbal Behavior” made quite an impact." WTF? What the hell does B. F. Skinner have to do with anything? Never mind. Her friend continues, "Chomsky also collaborated with Marcel-Paul Schützenberger who I believe was anti-Darwinian. But he’s distanced himself from ID-his anti-ID screed was noted."
Yeah, he's "distanced" himself from ID. Like here where he says, | Quote | "In the interest of fairness, perhaps the president’s speechwriters should take him seriously when they have him say that schools should be open-minded and teach all points of view. So far, however, the curriculum has not encompassed one obvious point of view: Malignant Design.
Unlike Intelligent Design, for which the evidence is zero, malignant design has tons of empirical evidence, much more than Darwinian evolution, by some criteria: the world’s cruelty. Be that as it may, the background of the current evolution/intelligent design controversy is the widespread rejection of science, a phenomenon with deep roots in American history that has been cynically exploited for narrow political gain during the last quarter-century. Intelligent Design raises the question whether it is intelligent to disregard scientific evidence about matters of supreme importance to the nation and world — like global warming." |
Yeah, I guess saying there's "zero" evidence for Intelligent Design and "tons" of evidence for Malignant Design might be interpreted as anti-ID in certain quarters. |
This blog entry of an e-mail exchange with Chomsky re evolution makes me wonder what this evidence of anti-Darwinian thought really is.
Chomsky has tenure, that magic talisman that lets you say what you think. (Not that he needs help.) The anarchist who was the most cited author of the 80's? Yeah, he was kowtowing mooch-wise by altar light to the moneyed classes.
Who was this "friend"? My money is on Berlinski, the only person on earth who would think a connection with Schutzenberger is important, and has an opinion on Schutzenberger's anti-Darwinianness.
The sad old fellow? As frequent readers of O'Leary know, her own father has made several recent appearances in this role, a prop for agit-prop.
Or as Google Translate would say, O the Huge Manatee!
ETA - Amazon helpfully let me search inside Language and Mind, and on p. 85, note 26, Chomsky references a Wistar conference paper by Schutzenberger. However, even though Wistar papers are often used as ID touchstones, here Chomsky seems to be expressing a certain faith that constraints exist which will whittle down the astronomical improbabiliities to something closer to possible. In several other references to evolution in the book, Chomsky is not critical of the process, only clear about our ignorance of the mechanism.
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I’m referring to evolution, not changes in allele frequencies. - Cornelius Hunter
I’m not an evolutionist, I’m a change in allele frequentist! - Nakashima
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