124318167 Noam Chomsky Human Nature and the Origins of Language

8/22/2019 124318167 Noam Chomsky Human Nature and the Origins of Language

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Radical Anthropology: It’s unusual onthe left to work explicitly, as you do,with a concept of geneticallydetermined human nature. Manysuspect the idea must set limits on ourability to change the world and alsochange ourselves in the process. So,let’s start by asking, what exactly doyou mean by ‘human nature’?

Noam Chomsky: It is considered

unusual, but I think that is a mistake.Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left.He was one of the founders of what isnow called ‘sociobiology’ or‘evolutionary psychology’ with hisbook Mutual Aid , arguing that humannature had evolved in ways conduciveto the communitarian anarchism thathe espoused. Marx’s early manuscripts,with their roots in the Enlightenmentand Romanticism, derivedfundamental concepts such as

alienation from a conception of humannature – what we would callgenetically determined. In fact, anyonewho merits attention and whopromotes any cause at all is doing soon the basis of a belief that it issomehow good for humans, because of their inherent nature.

To object that the facts about humannature set limits on our ability tochange the world and ourselves makesabout as much sense as the lament that

our lack of wings sets limits on ourability to ‘fly’ as far as eagles under ourown power. There is nothing moremysterious about the concept humannature than about the concept bee orchicken nature, at least for those whoregard humans as creatures in thebiological world. Like other organisms,humans have a certain geneticendowment (apparently varying littlein the species, not a surpriseconsidering its recent separation from

other hominids). That determines whatwe call their nature.

RA: We agree! We would also insist onthe importance of anthropology, in

order to be sure that the concept of ‘human nature’ we’re working withcaptures the diversity of humanexperience. Your work on linguistics,on the other hand, deliberately set outin isolation from anthropology and thesocial sciences. Why? Do you stillconsider that separation necessary?

Chomsky: The idea of a ‘separation’ isan interesting myth. It might be worth

investigating its origins. The facts arequite the opposite. Some of the earliestwork in our programme at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), back to the 1950s, was onnative American languages (Hidatsa,Mohawk, Menomini). Later, with KenHale’s appointment 40 years ago, thedepartment became one of the worldcentres of research in Australian andnative American languages, soon afterothers, worldwide. That engaged

faculty and students in issues of landrights, endangered languages andcultures, cultural wealth, educationaland cultural programmes in indigenouscommunities (run mainly by MITgraduates brought here from indigen-ous communities), the spectacularrevival of Wampanoag as a spokenlanguage after 100 years (mainly thework of Hale and Jesse Little Doe),stimulating cultural revival as well, andmuch else. And of course all of thisinteracting closely with theoretical

work, contributing to it and drawingfrom it. Where is the separation?

RA: But you have always insisted,haven’t you, on the difference betweennatural and social science? Is linguisticsa social or natural science? Or has theprogress of linguistics as a scienceblurred any meaningful boundarybetween the two?

Chomsky: I have never suggested any

principled difference between thenatural and social sciences. There are,of course, differences between physicsand sociology. Physics deals withsystems that are simple enough so that

it is possible, sometimes, to achievedeep results, though leaving manypuzzles; I just happened to read anarticle posted on physicsworld.com onthe basic unsolved problems aboutformation of snow crystals. It’s roughlythe case that if systems become toocomplex to study in sufficient depth,physics hands them over to chemistry,then to biology, then experimentalpsychology, and finally on to history.

Roughly. These are tendencies, andthey tend to distinguish roughlybetween hard and soft sciences.

RA: OK, let’s consider yourcontribution to the science of linguistics. First it might be worthreminding our non-specialist readerswhere it all began. Your work onlanguage started with a critique of thethen-prevailing view that children hadto learn their natal language. You

insisted instead that it was an innatepart of our brain. In other words,humans no more have to learnlanguage than we have to teach ourstomachs how to digest. How did youcome to this conclusion? And how canwe know whether it’s true?

Chomsky: I cannot respond to thequestions, because I do not understandthem. Plainly, children learn theirlanguage. I don’t speak Swahili. And itcannot be that my language is ‘an

innate property of our brain.’Otherwise I would have beengenetically programmed to speak(some variety of) English. However,some innate capacity – some part of the human genetic endowment – entersinto language acquisition. That muchis uncontroversial among those whobelieve that humans are part of thenatural world. If it were not true, it

Humannature and the origins of language

NoamChomsky is institute

professor and professor of linguistics (emeritus) at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.

NoamChomsky

Noam Chomsky ranks among the leading intellectual figures of modern times and has changed theway we think about what it means to be human, revolutionising linguistics and establishing it as amodern science. He agreed to discuss just some of his ideas with Radical Anthropology .


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would be a miracle that mygranddaughter reflexively identifiedsome elements of the blooming buzzingconfusion as language-related and wenton to acquire capacities of the kindthat you and I are now exercising,while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird,bee…), presented with exactly the samedata, could not take the first step, letalone the later ones. Andcorrespondingly she could not acquiretheir capacities. There is also aquestion about whether mygranddaughter’s achievement fallsunder the technical concepts of learning developed in one or anotherbranch of psychology, or whether theyare more properly subsumed undergeneral theories of growth anddevelopment. About these mattersthere are real questions and legitimate

controversy: What is the nature of thegenetic endowment? How doesacquisition proceed? Etc. Scientists doroutinely ask similar questions aboutthe visual system, system of motororganisation, and others – including, infact, the digestive system.

RA: Point taken! But aren’t what youterm ‘external’ languages such asSwahili of secondary interest from ascientific point of view, since language

as you define it is basically for internalcognition, not social communication?It’s surely central to your position thatyou don’t need Swahili or any otherexternal language just to think logicallyand clearly? A second point is thatmost of us take for granted that innatehuman capacities such as vision ordigestion evolved gradually, throughwhat Darwin termed ‘descent withmodification’. Your argument thatlanguage emerged in an ancestralindividual in an instant – before any

external language could have existed –suggests that we are talking about anentirely different kind of thing?

Chomsky: I would not say that Swahiliis an ‘E(xternal) language’. I don’t evenunderstand what that means. In fact, Iknow of no characterisation of E-language. I introduced the term, butdidn’t define it, except as a cover termfor any conception of language otherthan I-language. Without an

explanation of what you mean bySwahili (apparently, something otherthan the similar I-languages of individual speakers), I can’t answer thequestion whether it is of secondary or

primary (or no) interest. I do not agreethat I-language is “basically forinternal cognition, not socialcommunication.” It is surely used forboth, and it’s not “for” anything, anymore than hands are “for” typing onthe computer, as I’m now doing.

It’s a mistake to suppose that capacitiesmust evolve gradually. There are manyknown examples of sharp changes –slight genetic modification that yieldssubstantial phenotypic effects, andmuch else. By coincidence, I was justlooking at an article in Science on the‘Avalon explosion’, which appears tobe one of many examples of anexplosion of forms without gradualselection. But it really doesn’t matter inthe present context. The humandigestive and visual systems did clearly

evolve over a very long period.Language as far as we know did not.Anatomically modern humans arefound up to 200,000 years ago;behaviourally modern humans appearvery recently in evolutionary time, asfar as evidence now exists, perhapswithin a window of 50-100,000 yearsago, a flick of an eye in evolutionarytime. That’s why palaeoanthropologistIan Tattersall regards humanintelligence generally as an “emergent

quality”, not “a product of Nature’spatient and gradual engineering overthe eons.”

I did not say that language as a com-pleted system emerged in an individualin an instant. But I cannot think of acoherent alternative to the idea thatmutations take place in individuals,not communities, so that whateverrewiring of the brain yielded theapparently unique properties of language, specifically recursive gener-

ation of hierarchically structuredexpressions, would therefore havetaken place in an individual, and onlylater been used among individuals whohad inherited this capacity.

RA: Sure, evolution proceeds throughthe selection of chance mutations thatarise in individuals. But is therenothing we can say about the terms of selection? Nothing about why a chancemutation for language might have

increased in frequency in thepopulation? Fingers surely evolved forsomething, after all – even if not fortyping e-mails! To be sure we’veunderstood you here: you say that

communication is a possible functionof language but that it’s just oneamong many possible functions, henceof no special relevance either to thenature of language or its origins?

Chomsky: At the Alice V. and David H.Morris Symposium on the Evolution of Language held at Stony BrookUniversity in October 2005 (andelsewhere), I quoted evolutionarybiologists Salvador Luria and Francois Jacob, both Nobel Laureates, asexpressing the view that communicativeneeds would not have provided “anygreat selective pressure to produce asystem such as language,” with itscrucial relation to “development of abstract or productive thinking”; “therole of language as a communicationsystem between individuals would have

come about only secondarily… Thequality of language that makes itunique does not seem to be so much itsrole in communicating directives foraction” or other common features of animal communication, but rather “itsrole in symbolizing, in evoking cogni-tive images,” in “molding” our notionof reality and yielding our capacity forthought and planning, through itsproperty of allowing infinite combin-ations of symbols” and therefore

“mental creation of possible worlds.”

There is good reason to believe thatthey are right, in part for reasons Imentioned in the passage to which youare referring. If the rewiring of thebrain that yielded recursive generationof hierarchically structured expressionstook place in an individual, not agroup (and there seems to be nocoherent alternative), then interactionmust have been a later phenomenon.Language would have evolved first as

an internal object, a kind of “languageof thought” (LOT), withexternalisation (hence communication)an ancillary process. I can’t review herethe strong and growing evidence tosupport this conclusion, but I haveelsewhere. There are ample reasonswhy having a LOT would conferselectional advantage: the person soendowed could plan, interpret, reflect,etc., in ways denied to others. If thatadvantage is partially transmitted to

descendants, at some later stage therewould be opportunity forcommunication, and motivation todevelop a means of externalising theinternal LOT – a process that might



not involve evolution at all; perhaps itwas a matter of problem solving usingavailable cognitive mechanisms. Thisis, of course, speculation, like all talkabout the evolution of language. But itis the minimal assumption, and I thinkenters in some way into all suchspeculations, even if tacitly. Theconclusion, quite plausible I think, isthat while language can surely be usedfor communication (as can much else),communication probably has nospecial role in its design or evolution.

As for organs, traits, etc., being “for”something, the notion may be a usefulshorthand, but shouldn’t be taken tooseriously, if only because of theubiquitous phenomenon of exaptation.Suppose that insect wings developedprimarily as thermoregulators and then

were used for skimming and finallyflying, evolving along the way. Whatwould they be “for”? Or what is theskeleton “for”? For keeping oneupright, protecting organs, storingcalcium, making blood cells…? Aproperty of an organism enters into itslife (and survival) in many differentways, some more salient than others.But there is no simple notion of itsbeing “for” some function.

RA: At the conference you mention,you also talked about ‘the great leapforward’ – the ‘human revolution’, asmany have called it. It’s fair to say, wethink, that most Darwinian theoristswould regard the social dimensions of this major transition as having played adecisive role. We are thinking, forexample, of the late John MaynardSmith, who linked the emergence of language with the earliest socialcontracts – an idea harking back toRousseau. How does your origins

scenario fit with approaches of thissocial and political kind? Darwiniansdon’t take cooperation for granted.Can you say anything about the socio-political conditions which might havedriven our ancestors to start talkingand listening to one another?

Chomsky: I should make it clear thatthe term ‘great leap forward,’ referringto the burst of creative activity, suddenin evolutionary time, was not mine. It’s

Jared Diamond’s. It’s commonlyassumed that the emergence of language was a key element of thegreat leap. We of course know verylittle about the sociopolitical

conditions that existed at the time, butthere’s no scenario I can think of thatsuggests how a sudden change in theseconditions could have led to theemergence of language. The onlyplausible assumption I have ever heard,and I suspect the only one that wouldbe taken seriously by evolutionarybiologists, is that some rewiring of thebrain, perhaps the result of some slightmodification in the functioning of regulatory circuits, provided the basisfor this new capacity.

The simplest assumption – whichappears to be implicit in all of the morecomplex ones that have been proposed– is that the rewriting yielded ‘Merge’,the simplest recursive function, whichinstantaneously made available aninfinite array of structured expressions

generated from whatever conceptual‘atoms’ are available. That yields, ineffect, an internal I-language, a‘language of thought,’ providingobvious advantages to the person soendowed. If the mutation is partiallytransmitted to offspring, they toowould have the advantage. And overtime it might have come to dominate asmall breeding group. At that stagethere becomes a motivation toexternalise the I-language, that is, to

map the internal objects generated tothe sensori-motor system, yielding whatwe think of as language – the externalexpressions we are exchanging now, forexample. That mapping is quite non-trivial, and the problem of how toconstruct it can be solved in manydifferent ways. It is in these ancillaryprocesses that languages differ widely,and in which the mass of complexity of language resides. It’s not at all clear thatthis is, technically, a step in theevolution of language. It might have

been just a matter of problem-solving,using existing cognitive capacities.

The secondary step of externalisationevidently took place under existingsociopolitical conditions, and probablyprofoundly changed them. Beyondthat, evidence is thin. I do not see hownotions of social contract might playmore than a superficial role. Scientistsgenerally, not just evolutionarybiologists, don’t take much for granted.

But there isn’t much doubt that likeother animal societies, those of Homosapiens involved plenty of cooperation,which might have been considerablyenhanced, one would suppose, by the

emergence of the remarkableinstrument of language.

RA: Would you agree that scienceinvolves restricting our speculativehypotheses to those that can be testedagainst empirical data? We are notclear in what sense the speculation youhave just offered us is testable.Presumably we should expect to findrecursion playing a central role in everyknown language – not just in thelanguage of thought but in language asactually spoken. It seems that this isn’tthe case. Some linguists have claimedthat the language of the Piraha, forexample, almost entirely lacksrecursion and for that reason presentsa challenge to your theory. Does it?

Chomsky: Don’t quite understand the

first question. Which speculation doyou have in mind?

As for the Piraha, there’s a commonconfusion between recursion andembedding. Everett claimed that Pirahalacks embedding. Others challenge thatclaim (since his examples of Pirahalanguage appear to me to haveexamples of relative clauses embeddedin phrases, I don’t know what Everettmeans by embedding). But I haven’t

seen any claim that Piraha lacksrecursion, that is, that there are a finitenumber of sentences or sentenceframes. If that’s so, it would mean thatthe speakers of this language aren’tmaking use of a capacity that theysurely have, a normal situation; plentyof people throughout history woulddrown if they fall into water. Nothingmuch follows except for a question asto why they haven’t made use of thesecapacities (a question independent of Everett’s assumptions about the

culture). No one seriously doubts that if Piraha children are brought up inBoston they’ll be speaking BostonEnglish, that is, that the capacities arepresent, unlike other animals, as far asis known. There’s no challenge to thetheory – not mine, but everyone’s – thatthe human language faculty providesthe means for generation of an infinitearray of structured expressions.

RA: We had in mind your whole

speculative origins scenario. How doesit stand up to what we know aboutprimate politics and cognition? Thehypothesised behavioural ecology of our hominin ancestors? The laws of


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evolution of animal signals? Does it sayanything testable in the light of findings from these arguably relevantfields, or in the light of archaeologicaldata? And so on…

Chomsky: You’ll have to explain to mewhat you mean by my ‘speculativeorigins scenario’. In particular, can youidentify what I’ve written about thisthat is even controversial enough torequire empirical test? Or is it notperfectly consistent with what isknown about our ancestors? Or, forthat matter, what is not accepted,tacitly, by everyone who has had aword to say on this topic?

RA: It is a refreshingly bold “just-so”story for the evolutionary emergence of language. It’s certainly parsimonious

and has a kind of logic on its side, buthow could we discriminate betweenyour story and any other? ModernDarwinism provides us with ways toturn a just-so story into a testableproposition – by modelling the costsand benefits of proposed adaptivebehaviours, for example. To count asscientific, a hypothesis surely has to betestable. Can you specify just one ortwo experimental results orarchaeological finds or anything else

that might in principle pose a problemfor your hypothesis of instantaneouslanguage evolution?

Chomsky: I’m afraid I am still puzzled.The question I raised remainsunanswered, and as long as this is so, Ido not really understand what you areasking. If it is true that what I havesuggested is not even controversialenough to require empirical test, isperfectly consistent with what isknown about our ancestors, and is

accepted, tacitly, by everyone who hasa word to say on this topic, then I donot see how the question you areposing arises. So I cannot proceed untilyou indicate to me in what respectsthat judgment is incorrect.

I have not suggested that theemergence of language isinstantaneous. Rather, that therewiring of the brain enabling aninfinite array of structured expressions

was in effect instantaneous. I havenever heard of an alternative to thissuggestion. That leaves plenty of questions, among them, the question towhat extent the internal computational

system that arises is a “perfectsolution” to conditions imposed by theCI (conceptual-intentional) interface(hence in effect also instantaneous),and the question how the internalsyntax-semantics is externalised, a laterprocess virtually by definition, and onethat might not even involve evolutionin the sense of genomic change.

RA: Let’s try to summarise yourargument so the point we’re driving atcan be made clearer. Althoughlanguage in a broad sense relies onvarious evolved structures andmechanisms, and although languagecan be used for communication, thecrucial step that gave our species thelanguage faculty was a chance rewiringof the brain. This genetic eventinstantly gave rise to a computational

mechanism for recursion – somethingunique to humans, and perhapsoriginally nothing to do with language.Perhaps it evolved as an adaptation for,say, navigation, this mechanismsubsequently being exapted forlanguage. In your 2002 Science articleco-authored with Marc Hauser andTecumseh Fitch, you describe all this asa “tentative, testable hypothesis inneed of further empiricalinvestigation”. Our previous questions

were merely inviting you to clarify forour readers what some of these testsmight look like. What kind of experimental or observational resultsmight pose a problem for the theory?

We’re taken aback by your claim thatevery serious scholar agrees with youon these points. Our own impression isthat virtually every scholar vehementlydisagrees! Ray Jackendoff and StevenPinker come to mind. We are notinterested, for the moment, in whether

the truth lies more with you or morewith Pinker and Jackendoff. If we areto have a Darwinian account of theemergence of language, we surely needto ask what might have been theselection pressures that gave rise to it inhumans but in no other animal? Pinkerargues that the explanation is socialcooperation, explaining this in turn byinvoking kin selection and reciprocalaltruism. But these are widelyapplicable Darwinian principles, by no

means restricted to Homo sapiens. Sowhy didn’t apes evolve language? Orsomething a bit like language? Wereour hominin ancestors particularly co-operative? Which ones and when? Is

there any archaeological evidence, forexample, that our ancestors of four orfive millions of years ago were gettingespecially co-operative? What socio-ecological factors might have driventhis? And so on. This has turned into alonger than usual question, but thereason we’re interested in these kindsof issues – and why we’re interested inthe fact that you seem to ignore ordownplay them – is that they haveobvious political dimensions. Whatecological and social conditions, forexample, are conducive tocommunistic co-operation? Or iseverything we need to know to befound in the computational mechan-isms of individual human brains?

Chomsky: You say you’re “takenaback by your claim that every serious

scholar agrees with you on thesepoints,” namely the points I’ve actuallymade. As far as I am aware, that istrue. Pinker and Jackendoff, forexample, tacitly pressuppose thesepoints. Of course they disagree withviews that they’ve attributed to me. Butthat was not my question: to repeat,what is controversial in what I’veactually said and written?

There’s no “hypothesis” in the paper I

co-authored with Hauser and Fitchabout recursion in language being anexaptation from deeper capacities,maybe used in navigation. Rather, that’sproposed as a possibility that could beexplored, and tested. It’s easy to seehow it could be explored: e.g., bystudying these processes in differentsystems and looking for commonalities,differences, appearance at various timesof evolution, the usual approaches of the comparative method; obviouslypremature in this case, because not

enough is known. There are plenty of hypotheses discussed, and there aremasses of empirical evidence testingthem, but they are about the nature of the system that evolved – obviously aprerequisite to study of its evolution.

So I’m back to where I was. Unless youcan identify some thesis that iscontroversial, and that isn’t accepted,at least tacitly, in all speculations aboutlanguage evolution that can be taken

seriously, I can’t respond to the queries.

RA: OK, we take your point, but we’retrying to get you to talk about someinteresting issues in evolutionary



science. The popular science writerMarek Kohn describes well what Imean in his chapter on trust in hisbook As We Know It . Kohn quotesanthropologist Chris Knight as sayingthat “Darwinian theory shows thatcheating is likely to result in higherfitness than co-operating – and thegreater the rewards of co-operation,the greater the unearned benefits to thefreeloader. Any theory of how lan-guage, symbolism or culture originatedhas to show how a system based oncooperative agreement could havedeveloped without being destabilised atany stage by the pursuit of individualinterests.” What do you think of this?

Chomsky: I don’t see the force of theclaim. For one thing, evolutionarytheory has nothing to say, in general, as

to whether cheating is more advantag-eous than cooperating. There are manycircumstances in which the contrarywould be true, and empirical evidence,though it exists, has little bearing onreal situations. For another, there’s noneed (or way) to establish what Knightdemands. One might just as well arguethat language differentiation resultsfrom pursuit of group interests, likeother kinds of cultural variety. Andindividual interests are beside the point.

Furthermore all such matters (evenmapping of I-language to the sensori-motor system) may have nothing to dowith evolution in the biological sense.

RA: The question is under whatcircumstances is the sharing of valuableinformation with non-kin using acheap signalling system like languagean evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS)?In all other species, a signal must becostly to be seen by the signal receiveras reliable in situations of conflict. But

if you don’t accept that language is anadaptation or arose in a Darwinian,biological world, then you need notsubmit to the constraints posed byselfish-gene theory. Is that why youdon’t see the force of these arguments?

Chomsky: Selfish-gene theory tells usnothing about the value of interactingthrough language. Human language isnothing like the signalling systems of other animals. Of course language

arose in a Darwinian biological world,because that’s all there is, but thatworld relates only superficially to thepop-biology that circulates informally.RA: OK, let’s move on. Our activist

readership will be interested to knowwhat they can do with your ideas.Frederick Engels once wrote, “Themore ruthlessly and disinterestedlyscience proceeds, the more it finds itself in harmony with the interests of theworkers.” That’s quite an inspiringidea. Revolutionaries need no ideology,he is saying – only science, conducteddispassionately for its own sake. Arewe right in saying that you don’tencourage socialists or anarchists toview science – or at any rate, your ownlinguistic science – as having potentialin that political sense?

Chomsky: I don’t encourage socialistsor anarchists to accept falsehoods, inparticular, to see revolutionarypotential where there is none. AntonPannekoek didn’t encourage radical

workers and other activists of the anti-Bolshevik left to see revolutionarypotential in his work in astronomy, forthe simple reason that he was honest,and knew there was none to speak of.The shred of truth that can beextracted from the remark of Engelsthat you cite (which I don’t recognise)is that those who wish to change theworld should have the best possibleunderstanding of the world, includingwhat is revealed by the sciences, some

of which they might be able to use fortheir purposes. That’s why workerseducation, including science andmathematics, has commonly been aconcern of left intellectuals.

RA: But do you think the scientificcommunity should get collectively self-organised and consciously activist?Let’s take the example of climatechange. Is astronomy entirelyunconnected with the task of familiarising ourselves with the big

picture here? With the origins of life onearth, with the reasons why we havelife on earth in the first place and withcomprehending why capitalism mightbe ultimately inconsistent with Earth’sfuture as a habitable planet? AntonPannekoek may, rightly or wrongly,not have seen the revolutionarypotential of his astronomy, but hecertainly linked his scientific outlookwith his politics – in politicalpamphlets on Darwinism and human

origins, for example. Might we yet seea pamphlet by Noam Chomsky, linkingyour scientific and your politicalthinking for a popular audience?Chomsky: I am reasonably familiar

with Pannekoek’s writings, and do notrecall his drawing conclusions abouthis political stands from his work onastronomy, nor do I see how one coulddo so. Nor why it should be a demand– no sane human being devotes 100%of his or her life to political activism.

If scientists and scholars were tobecome “collectively self-organised andconsciously activist” today, they wouldprobably devote themselves to serviceto state and private power. Those whohave different goals should (and do)become organized and activist. All thequestions you raise merit inquiry andattention, and if there are lessons to bedrawn from the sciences, then thatshould be the concern of everyone,including scientists to the extent thatthey can make a contribution. One

contribution they can and should makeis to be clear and explicit about thelimits of scientific understanding, amatter that is particularly important insocieties where people are trained todefer to alleged experts. I have writtenoccasionally on links between myscientific work and political thinking,but not much, because the links seemto me abstract and speculative. Othersbelieve the links to be closer, and havewritten more about them (Carlos

Otero, James McGilvray, Neil Smith,and others). If I can be convinced thatthe links are significant, I’ll be happy towrite about them.

RA: We have mostly talked about theevolution of language, but you areperhaps most famous for your politicalstand. It is understandable that yourpolitical work should attract hostilecriticism – material interests are atstake. What can seem more puzzling iswhy arcane academic debates, more

fittingly subject to disinterested inquirythan political polemic, can provokeequally impassioned criticism. Why isthis, do you think?

Chomsky: It should seem puzzling, toprofessionals as well. I have seen manyillustrations over the years, and they goback quite far in history. Sometimespeople are “defending their turf.”Sometimes it is personal jealousies. Iknow of cases that are really depraved.

Academics are not necessarily nicepeople. And one might mention aremark attributed to Henry Kissinger:the reason academic disputes are sovicious is that so little is at stake. I

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124318167 Noam Chomsky Human Nature and the Origins of Language