Recommend Books on This Thread

10 posts

Thoughts
Bob Dylan Roof

I picked up Tom Wolfe's polemic against Darwinism and Cartesian linguistics, The Kingdom of Speech , with the hope that it would expose Chomsky in the same way The Painted Word exposed Clement Greenberg and the other Burgs (Cultureburg) responsible for modern art culture. While not as amusing as The Painted Word , Wolfe's latest book does a fairly good job at exposing Chomsky. The primary thesis of the book is that Darwinian evolution is an inaccurate theory that cannot account for the existence of speech. By extension, evolutionary linguistic theories, such as Chomsky's, must also be incorrect. Wolfe substantiates this in much the same way that he substantiated his thesis that modern art culture was largely the product of fashion generated through the written word. Just as the Cultureburg fabricated successive waves of highly fashionable and complex reasons for considering modern art valuable, so Darwin and Chomsky created their own exclusive markets for scientific avant garde.

Against Darwin and Chomsky, Wolfe pits Alfred Russel Wallace and Daniel Everett: political and social outsiders whose brilliance and radical theories threatened to diminish the significance of Darwinism and Chomskyism. Along the way Wolfe develops a dismissive theory of Cartesian linguistics, suggesting that it developed on the basis of a desire for the appearance of mathematical certainty and the urge to avoid doing real field work. Indeed, Wolfe's Chomsky developed Cartesian linguistics in part to relieve himself of the obligation to leave air conditioned lecture halls and venture into the wild.

In contrast, Wallace and Everett represent the Trumpian spirit in science. Both were outsiders and rugged outdoorsmen advancing theories that threatened the purveyors of status and resulted in ostracism from the establishment. Wolfe really twists the shiv when he uses Chomsky's shtetl anarchism as a segue into a discussion of the natural anarchism of the Pirahã, the culture Everett claimed did not exhibit any of the characteristics of Chomsky's innate language capacity (such as contextless grammar). Wolfe notes with glee that Chomsky could have experienced genuine anarchism for himself if he only had the courage to leave the comfort of his hierarchical, air conditioned university and visit the Pirahã.

4 out 5 :agree:

Draugen
Amongst prominent linguists, Chomsky is notable for being monolingual and admittedly uninterested in foreign languages. For comparison, Saussurre, before developing the theories for which he is most know, had already mastered several ancient languages and contributed decisively to the study of Indo-European linguistics. Fluency, or at least in-depth knowledge of at least a handful of languages was practically universal among philologists(a word that has gone out of fashion almost everywhere but Germany, as far as I know), more or less until Chomsky's time.

Now, while there's no contradiction between being monolingual and a linguist, it's rather odd that someone with that background would want to dedicate his life to the study of language, unless he had a different kind of motivation. While Chomsky's idea of syntatical structures was quite useful, for example, when creating computerized models of language, it evinces a broader trend in academia of abandoning historical reference and a broad base of knowledge for pure theory and speculation. It was a victory for nerds at the expense of visionaries. Just imagine someone like the brothers Grimm or J.R.R. Tolkien emerging from one of today's linguistics departments.
Welund

Even Chomsky's father studied the Semitic languages.

Chomsky is also an "analytical philosopher" and ressentimental slave moralist. Iirc his idea of language informs his politics (or vice-versa) despite what he says. The "organ" that developed for language is the vocal chords themselves. But he thinks that the capacity for language makes all individual persons of equal intelligence. Once again we seem to have some nested Semitic theologician arguing there is some esoteric characteristic about the Word.

Bob Dylan Roof
Yes, Wolfe mentions this connection. Universal grammar conveniently maps onto a cosmopolitan, equalist human ontology, which, combined with logocentrism, allows Chomsky to conclude that all humans are capable of the same "creativity" - or something similar. Wolfe's alternative, following Everett, is to classify language as an artifact, like bronze weapons, which is not developed universally by all humans. A logical conclusion from this position is that bix nood is not the same as the Rig Veda, but that's racist.
Niccolo and Donkey
Cornelio
How to fail at almost everything and still win big

Scott Adams, 2014


You might want to buy this book because some random hispanic wrote a post about it on some obscure internet forum.


I've been following Adams for a long time. My first encounter with his work was about 7 years ago, when I read his "sci-fi/philosophical experiment" book God's Debris. I thought 'hey, this is a pretty smart book', then a couple of days later I completely forgot about it. His blog has been an interesting read too, he has always had a knack for presenting outrageous theories to the public to call attention to himself. Until last year's republican primaries, he mostly confined himself to musing about absurd ideas about the economy, the military, abortion, etc, always well within the limits political correctness imposes on us in this day and age. He was seen as a weirdo, but a lovable one, maybe a bit too libertarian for the tastes of the leftist media, but nothing too dangerous.


With his coverage of first the 2015 republican primaries, and then the 2016 republican campaign, though, he started to be considered by the media in a whole different light. Specifically Adams, a trained hypnotist and self-appointed expert on the issue of influencing other people, focused in his writing on Trump's persuasion skills, in his opinion some of the most highly developed in history. He wrote about Trump in a non-thoroughly disapproving tone, and despite him taking great pains to clarify that his political preferences did not align with either Trump's or any of the other candidates' policies, the vultures started circling around him, menacingly. In our current political climate, anything but complete compliance to the directives of the politically correct leftist media is considered total heresy. Some right-wing commentators took early note of this situation. I think the harassing campaign he has had to suffer made him angry, and his interest in Trump went from merely 'hey this guy is good at persuasion' to 'Hillary is a dangerous drunk and our lives are in danger if Trump is not elected'.


In the book I'm reviewing (which was actually published before this controversy, so I won't extend myself any more on it) Adams tells us how his successful career in the corporate world was truncated not once, but twice, by the enforcement of diversity in the company's hierarchy and promotion policies. My hypothesis is that Adams has a bone to pick against the PC mandarins, and he's machiavellicaly putting his plan against them into practice.


On to the book: it's not very good. A collection of platitudes, which he tries to present from an exciting perspective. Adams shows a great talent for coming up with new ways of naming old stuff: "moist robot hypothesis", "persuasion filter", etc; which mostly amounts to 'live life well and you'll be quite happy and go places". The book is filled with ground-breaking advice such as "keep your room tidy", or "do not listen to negative music". Generic self-help, affirmations and all. I wouldn't waste much time with it, all his good stuff is already for free in his blog. Buy this instead.

1/5
Cornelio

Using the persuasion filter I predict that the chances of Scott Adams registering here under a fake identity to make exaggeratedly positive comments on his book are 95%.

Welund
https://twitter.com/reaIscottadams on the diversity ceiling.

Cornelio :
With most self-help books, it is recommended only to read until you get to the hook. For some you only need to read the blog or watch the Youtube video.
Content Creator

Moralia v.III by Plutarch

Contains sayings and proverbs of classical kings, rulers and generals as well as Spartans and the qualities of their women. I'm only up to Alexander at the moment. Highlights so far are


You get all kinds of great insights into the characters of ancient figures. I actually bought it purely because it is one of the few primary sources on the Spartans. I was pleasantly surprised by the rest of it. I actually prefer the cultural, personal anecdotes (Herodotus) over the date/person/event reporting of say Thucydides. Its not that I'm not interested in the facts of a subject but I feel that is the skeleton, the anecdotes and such are the meat. You get a real whole picture of a time when you know what people were thinking, saying and what their practices were. For this reason I love cultural histories. With this volume of Moralia you get a wide array insights into famous classical personages. Which makes the distant classical period seem more tangible and you can, like with the Alexander quotes, grasp the motivations and characters of people. If you don't want to sit down and read an alphabetical record of quotes, things like this are great just to flip through when you're bored. I was lucky enough to stumble open a Loeb edition at half price which is very nice.

Classical Civilisation by Nigel Spivey

A good little primer for someone who wants to learn about the classical world at a glance. Good if you're a little hazy about the chronology. With the classics scholarship is actually better and better the closer to the present day. Obviously linguistic, archaeological and scientific advances along with just more discoveries make a book like this more factual than Gibbons. There is no political motive to rewrite classical times (yet). It is a straightforward and very approachable book that covers the time of Homer to Byzantium. I read the whole thing in 3 days. It is fairly entry level again but even if you consider yourself an expert you'll get another view of old ground from one of the better classicists around.

Eumeswil by Ernst Junger

More famous for being an unstoppable trench raider in WWI, Junger in his long twilight years wrote a huge amount of literature. I've read everything available in English including Eumeswil. The novel is about Martin the night steward of a dictators palace bar. Set somewhere in north Africa in a city state, long after a distant earth shattering catastrophe, the story is a first person diary containing the thoughts, beliefs and routine of a man trying to maintain a sense of self in the face of an exhausted dead culture. Junger through Martin theorises the concept of the "anarch" a sovereign individual of sorts, related to Stirner, but still very different.

Eumeswil can be read as a practical guide to living in the shadow of tyranny and decadence. We get a huge array of biological, historical, geological and linguistic anecdotes, lessons, facts and analogies woven throughout which show the depth and breadth of knowledge of then ageing Junger. Through the "luminar" a prescient (book was written in the 70's) device that seems to be a combination of VR and the internet, Martin interacts with historical people and places. It is a fascinating read not just for the insight into a man I consider to be one of the most noble of the 20th century, but also for the stories exploration of the concept of freedom and inner defiance.