PARTISAN REVIEW
337
It's helpful first to place Chomsky's conceptions of language and
the human mind in the context of the contemporary intellectual scene.
Though C. P. Snow's dualistic conception of the world of science and
the world of the humanities is coming to be - it probably always was
- a cliche, it is still useful to apply to current concepts of language
and the self. The humanist today likes to think that the most significant
uses of language defy complete systematic description, reduction to rules.
Uses of language express something uniquely different, it is supposed,
in each of us. For the humanist, the problem of understanding human
nature is the problem of specifying what it is that makes us different
from one another- what "gives us our identity." Attacks on this es–
sent~ally
subjectivistic view of language are usually interpreted as at–
tempts at dehumanization, robbing men of their dignity.
In
contrast,
the scientist tends to look at people not so much as individuals, but as
members of the same species. He explains the distinctions between ours
and other species from which we presumably evolved as differences in
degree and not in kind. As a result, the social sciences tend to break
down complex cognitive skiIIs and capacities into a network of simple
structures such as might be found in the capacities of other animal
species. The methodological creed of the social sciences emphasizes, in
the name of being scientific, the classification of empirical data, rather
than theoretical understanding.
Chomsky's conception differs from both the humanist and what
is taken to be the scientific. Like a scientist, he looks at language as a
biological phenomenon; but unlike the linguists of the previous genera–
tion he wants to locate the structure of this phenomenon across the
species. Furthermore, unlike the social scientists of today, Chomsky thinks
that one can infer from the formal features of language certain cognitive
capacities that are radically different from those of other animal species.
One of the most remarkable facts about Chomsky's theory is that in
order to support his claims, he uses data earlier thought of as subjective
and belonging to the humanities. According to Chomsky, what the
humanist at his best can unearth about our linguistic intuitions and
the creative use of languacie can be used in a scientific theory arguing
that the organization of our cognitive capacities and processes differs
drastically from the structure of capacities that we ascribe to other
animals or to inert matter.
Chomsky thinks that the social sciences ought to concern them–
selves with this kind of argument. Accordingly, the main goal of the
social sciences should be theoretical understanding rather than control,
as abstractly considered as are the more advanced physical sciences.
Chomsky's is a classic conception of man, unlike the self-indulgent,
