Decoding Chomsky: science and revolutionary politics

Table of Contents:

1. The revolutionary

2. The language machine

3. A man of his time

4. The most hideous institution on this earth

5. The cognitive revolution

6. The Tower of Babel

7. The Pentagon's 'new tower'

8. Machine translation : the great folly

9. A universal alphabet of sounds

10. Russian formalist roots

11. Incantation by laughter

12. Tatlin's tower

13. An instinct for freedom

14. The linguistics wars

15. Between colliding tectonic plates

16. The escapologist

17. The soul mutation

18. Carburettor and other innate concepts

19. A scientific revolution?

20. Mindless activism, tongue-tied science

21. Chomsky's tower

22. Before language

23. The human revolution

A fresh and fascinating look at the philosophies, politics, and intellectual legacy of one of the twentieth century’s most influential and controversial minds

Occupying a pivotal position in postwar thought, Noam Chomsky is both the founder of modern linguistics and the world’s most prominent political dissident. Chris Knight adopts an anthropologist’s perspective on the twin output of this intellectual giant, acclaimed as much for his denunciations of US foreign policy as for his theories about language and mind. Knight explores the social and institutional context of Chomsky’s thinking, showing how the tension between military funding and his role as linchpin of the political left pressured him to establish a disconnect between science on the one hand and politics on the other, deepening a split between mind and body characteristic of Western philosophy since the Enlightenment. Provocative, fearless, and engaging, this remarkable study explains the enigma of one of the greatest intellectuals of our time.

http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300221466/decoding-chomsky