Chris Knight (1) (1942–)

The Man With Two Brains

It seems Noam Chomsky has been living a lie. He has twisted his whole being into separating his beliefs from his work. He worked for the Pentagon at MIT, while claiming nothing he produced could, would or should help them in their murderous quest. Because Noam Chomsky despises the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex. So to live within and from it, he created a new science out of whole cloth: universal, transformational and generative grammars, a wholly natural show more science, independent of – well, humanity. Totally divorced from everyday communication, his rules are purely scientific and abstract. As a whole, it makes no sense to anyone, unless you look at him as having two brains. This is the essence of Decoding Chomsky, a totally engrossing roller coaster ride (Chris Knight’s own term) to rationalize what Noam Chomsky has wrought.

Chomsky singlehandedly caused a cognitive revolution, inspiring linguistics departments worldwide to include new directions in their teachings and research. And psychology, biology and sociology. That no one could actually make it work did not deter Chomsky. He became strident and critical, insisting he was right and everyone else just didn’t get it. His (linguistics) books were incomprehensible – it wasn’t just me. He defended them with bluster, vitriol and personal attacks. He attacked his own supporters as needed, as well as his inspirations and mentors. He changed history at will. Every decade he posited new, bizarre theories and said they could not be tested. You just had to accept them as he stated them. There was no possible explanation other than his. Because he was Noam Chomsky, the whole world bought in.

I personally always had trouble with the linguistics side of Noam Chomsky, and I told him so. He told me not to worry – a lot of people did. I much prefer his political side, where he has opened eyes and minds to deeper meaning in current events, journalism and politics worldwide. For that, he is the most respected American in the world.

Knight spends the entire book piling on evidence that Chomsky has the unique ability to split his brain into two diametrically opposed buffers: Pentagon science and social activism, separated by a firewall. But I don’t need Knight’s bizarre physiological theory. It’s all very clear and consistent to me now. Chomsky actively misdirected and subverted the entire field of linguistics to delay its use by his military employers, and thereby remain true to himself. He screwed the Pentagon. He took their money, kept his job, and gave them nothing real to work with. The rest of us were just collateral damage. We paid the price for his personal mission. He manufactured consent by bullying. It was his own Command & Control program.

Knight has been swept up by the madness. He takes the theories seriously. He spends endless pages refuting Chomsky and displaying plausible alternate scenarios. Not once does he employ the word “fraud”. I think he is too close to it to see the nugget of truth at the center. Regardless, his book is riveting and revealing, and gives badly needed perspective to an American icon.

And by the way, Noam Chomsky read this book prior to publication, and denies none of it.

David Wineberg show less

It is hard to take seriously a book that is so unashamedly biased against its subject. Mr. Knight's approach is that Mr. Chomsky's ideas are so wrong that his work is almost valueless. I am not qualified to judge Mr. Chomsky's work on its merits, however, I am qualified to say that the western scientific practice values well-argued theories even if they are technically wrong. Thus we value the works of Aristotle, Agrippa, Ptolmy, Hippocrates, and even Sigmund Freud into the body of science, show more even though we do not refer to their findings very often. Chomsky has broken new ground with his theories on language and he deserves our respect even when we argue against his theories.

I received a review copy of "Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics"
by Chris Knight (Yale University Press) through NetGalley.com. show less