Noam Chomsky

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Western Philosophy 20th / 21st-century philosophy

Name	Noam Chomsky
Birth	December 7, 1928 (age 79) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
School/tradition	Linguistics
Main interests	Linguistics · Psychology Philosophy of language Politics · Ethics
Notable ideas	Generative grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding, Chomsky hierarchy, context-free grammar, principles and parameters, linguistic minimalism, language acquisition device, Chomsky Normal Form, propaganda model^[1]
Influences	Bertrand Russell · John Dewey Mikhail Bakunin · W. von Humboldt Adam Smith · Rudolf Rocker Zellig Harris · Immanuel Kant René Descartes · George Orwell Karl Marx · C. West Churchman W.V.O. Quine · Alan Turing.
Influenced	Colin McGinn · Edward Said Steven Pinker · Tanya Reinhart Daniel Everett · Morris Halle Gilbert Harman · Jerry Fodor Howard Lasnik ·Robert Fisk Neil Smith ·Ray Jackendoff Norbert Hornstein ·Jean Bricmont Marc Hauser ·Norman Finkelstein Robert Lees · Mark Baker Julian Boyd ·Bill Hicks Ray C. Dougherty ·Derek Bickerton Thom Yorke

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chomsky created the theory of generative grammar. This is one of the most important contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th century. He also helped start the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. He challenged the behaviorist way of looking at behavior and language. This was the main approach used in the 1950s. His natural approach to the study of language also changed the philosophy of language and mind. He also invented the Chomsky hierarchy, a way of looking at formal languages in terms of their power to explain language.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–1992 time period. He was the eighth-most cited scholar in any time period.^[2]^[3]^[4]

In the 1960s he criticized the Vietnam War. Because of that, Chomsky became more widely known for his media criticism and politics. He is a key intellectual figure within the left wing of United States politics. Chomsky is widely known for his political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments.

[change] Notes

↑ Kanan Makiya, Fouad Moughrabi, Adel Safty, Rex Brynen, "Letters to the Editor" in Journal of Palestine Studies, Journal of Palestine Studies via JSTOR (Vol. 23, No. 4, Summer, 1994, pp. 196-200), accessed December 4 2007. Relevant quotation: "On page 146 of my book, I clearly adopt the propaganda model developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman..."
↑ "Chomsky is Citation Champ", MIT News Office, 1992-04-15. Retrieved on 2007-09-03.
↑ Hughes, Samuel. "Speech!", 'The Pennsylvania Gazette', July/August 2001. Retrieved on 2007-09-03. “According to a recent survey by the Institute for Scientific Information, only Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, and Freud are cited more often in academic journals than Chomsky, who edges out Hegel and Cicero.”
↑ Robinson, Paul. "The Chomsky Problem", 'The New York Times', 1979-02-25. “Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today. He is also a disturbingly divided intellectual.”

[change] References

Barsky, Robert F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-1550222821.
Chomsky, Noam (1996). Perspectives on Power. Montréal: Black Rose. ISBN 978-1551640488.
Kreisler, Harry (2002-03-22). Activism, Anarchism, and Power: Conversation with Noam Chomsky. Conversations with History. Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley. Retrieved on 3 September 2007.