NOAM CHOMSKY: BIOGRAPHY, THEORIES, CONTRIBUTIONS, WORKS - PHILOSOPHY - 2025

Noam Chomsky (1928 - present) is an American philosopher, linguist, historian, psychologist, social critic, and political activist best known for his contributions to research on the functioning of language. He is often known as the "father of modern linguistics."

He currently holds a position as Professor Emeritus at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), although his main work is that of researcher and disseminator. To date he has written more than a hundred books, on topics such as language, war, the media, and politics. In addition, he is one of the main exponents of libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Duncan rawlinson

During the Vietnam War era, Chomsky was arrested multiple times for his political activism, against what he saw as a sign of US imperialism. In fact, it became part of President Nixon's Enemy List. Throughout his life, he has continued to generate controversy on different issues, for example by supporting the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.

However, despite all the political problems he has had during his life, Chomsky has managed to make a dent in history as one of the most cited researchers in the world.

His contributions changed the way we understand both the human mind and language, leading to new fundamental discoveries in the field of neuropsychology.

Biography

Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia, in the United States. He is known mainly for his theoretical works in the field of linguistics, which treat language as an innate biological capacity in all human beings. His contributions have served as the basis for great advances in areas such as cognitive psychology, philosophy and neuroscience.

However, Chomsky has also done very important work as a political activist, social critic, and general thinker. To this day, he is still active, having published more than 100 different books on subjects as different as psychology, philosophy, capitalism and colonialism.

Early years

Noam Chomsky was born into a Jewish family, and from a very young age he began to be interested in different subjects and learning in general. Possibly his passion for acquiring new knowledge is that he attended an experimental school where students were invited to ask their own questions and direct their own learning.

Despite being born in Pennsylvania, at only 13 years old Chomsky began to travel on his own to New York, with the intention of acquiring new books with which to quench his thirst for knowledge.

On these short trips he came into contact with an important Jewish intellectual community, whose members helped to enrich his own views. During these years many of his most important political ideas were formed, such as that all people are capable of understanding economic and government affairs, and that they can therefore make decisions on their own.

Thus, he began to form the basis of his anarcho-syndicalist vision, which he has defended throughout his life and which has brought him many problems.At just 16 years old, Noam Chomsky entered the University of Pennsylvania, but at first he did not he found too many incentives to stay there.

He was thinking of leaving after two years of studies to begin to deepen more in his political ideas; but he changed his mind when he met Zellig S. Harris, one of the most important linguists of the time.

University studies

Chomsky began studying under Harris's tutelage, and following Harris's recommendations, he enrolled in philosophy classes taught by Nelson Goodman and Nathan Salmon, which helped further enrich his views. At this time he also began receiving math classes from Nathan Fine.

For his master's thesis, which he presented in 1951 at Harvard University, Noam Chomsky mixed aspects of Harris's theories of language and Goodman's ideas on the philosophy of science and formal systems, thus creating a totally new that he would apply later in his life in his own research.

However, having deviated significantly from the ideas of both thinkers, neither of them accepted their research papers. In fact, during the following years Chomsky's theories were widely criticized by most scholars of the time. He, however, continued to trust them and continued his work in this field.

In 1955 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, with one of the chapters of his first work (known as Transformational Analysis) as a thesis. After this, in 1956 he got a teaching position at MIT, which he had to combine with a machine translation project.

Early years as a teacher and researcher

Chomsky continued to work at MIT for many years, combining that position with other projects. During this time the researcher referred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as "a fairly open and free place, open to experimentation and without rigid requirements."

In 1957 he got a position as adjunct professor, which he had to combine from that same year with that of external professor at Columbia University. In addition, in 1958 he published his first book on linguistics, Syntactic Structures, whose postulates were directly opposed to the dominant current at the time.

After the publication of this book, Chomsky had to face a great number of criticisms. However, he continued to confront theories that he thought were not true, and for example criticized the ideas of Skinner (one of the most important psychologists in all of history) about language. This work finally brought him some academic recognition.

From this moment, with some support from the government and various scientific institutions in the country, Noam Chomsky continued researching and publishing new works on linguistics, which led him to achieve significant fame both nationally and internationally.

Later life

Hans Peters / Anefo

After the outbreak of the Vietnam War in 1962, Chomsky also jumped into the public arena by criticizing what he perceived as an attempt by the United States to colonize the territories of other countries. He also began to practice as a political activist, for example refusing to pay his taxes and supporting students who did not want to be recruited.

During the following years, Chomsky was arrested numerous times because of his opposition to the United States government; But as his fame in the field of linguistics continued to grow, he never lost his position as a professor at MIT. His wife, however, began to study the possibility of Noam being jailed or fired at some point.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Chomsky continued to research the workings of language and to act as a political activist. At this time he published several highly controversial works, which the government or the traditional media did not like, but precisely because of this his fame did not stop growing.

It was at this time also that his ideas on linguistics and politics were consolidated, to be later expanded by his followers and students.

90s and present

Considering that much of what could be said about language had already been published, and focusing more and more on what he perceived as great political injustices, in the 1990s Chomsky began to withdraw from the world of research and became even more involved. more on activism.

For example, in 1996 he published Powers and Prospects, a work dealing with the independence of East Timor. Later, after leaving MIT in 2002, he maintained his position as professor emeritus and continued to conduct some research and seminars on campus; but he turned his attention almost entirely to politics.

In more recent times, Chomsky for example has been well known for criticizing events like the Iraq War, which he considered an imperialist movement on the part of the United States; and the so-called "War on Terror" that emerged after the famous September 11 attacks.

In 2012, Chomsky returned to the political arena by supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2016, he shot a documentary called Requiem for the American Dream that summarized his views on capitalism, economic inequality, and current politics.

Currently, he continues to carry out some research and teach at institutions such as the University of Arizona, despite not having as much relevance as in the past.

Main theories

Created by John Soares, uploaded to Commons by Stevertigo

Without a doubt, the field in which Chomsky's work has influenced the most is that of linguistics and the study of language. Here are some of the author's main ideas in this area.

Innate language skills

One of Chomsky's most important ideas had to do with the nature of creativity. For this author, children have certain innate capacities in this area, which are shown practically from the moment they say their first words.

In his research, he realized that they in fact often seem to be able to master concepts and skills that have not yet been taught.

Thus, Chomsky thought that at least part of the knowledge about language must be innate, which was in contrast to the tabula rasa model that was in force in his time and was promoted by currents such as behaviorism. However, the author thought that humans are not aware of this innate knowledge until it is made explicit through learning.

Chomsky's conclusion was that a certain part of the brain must contain a so-called "language module," containing innate information that would later be developed to allow mastery of speech even in the presence of insufficient learning stimuli.

Another of the most important ideas in this regard was that of "universal grammar": the theory that all human beings share a certain underlying linguistic structure, regardless of what language we speak, what culture we have grown up in, or any other aspect of the language. environment in which we grow.

Transformational generative grammar

In his work Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky challenged the mainstream in the study of language at that time, structural linguistics. In contrast, he presented his own theory, which he called "transformational grammar."

Basically, the idea behind it is that language involves both deep and unconscious structures, as well as other superficial ones. In order to be able to speak correctly, superficial structures transform deeper ones through a series of grammatical rules, which serve to relate unconscious meanings to specific sounds and words.

On the other hand, Noam Chomsky also described a hierarchy that serves to classify the different types of grammar that exist in different languages ​​around the world. This classification is used to understand the logic that underlies each of them, and today it is used in areas such as computer programming and the theory of automata.

Minimalist program

In recent decades, Chomsky has been working on a system that would allow him to simplify language, its teaching, and its learning as much as possible. This system, known as the "minimalist program", departs quite a bit from his previous research and focuses on studying the relationship between meaning and sound.

The intention behind this new research is to understand the way in which the brain generates the grammatical rules of language by associating sounds and meanings. Thus, while Chomsky was formerly interested in the "what" of speech, his studies now come closer to understanding the "how."

Other contributions

Although Chomsky is known primarily for his contributions in the field of language, his long career as a researcher and activist has allowed him to develop important theories in other fields. The most prominent are politics, and the study of human nature.

Politics

One of the most important issues for Noam Chomsky throughout his life has been politics. Although he was always interested in it, he began to actively get involved in the state of his country after the outbreak of the Vietnam War, which he understood as an attempt by the United States to expand its empire around the world.

Chomsky defines himself as an anarcho-syndicalist. According to his own statements, this means that he believes that the State must guarantee maximum freedom to its citizens. For this reason, it does not consider legitimate the fact that there is a ruling political class that can choose what, for example, is legal or not.

At the same time, Chomsky has stated on multiple occasions that in democracies, such as the one in the United States, the government cannot control its citizens by force; and for that reason it needs to manipulate them so that they act and think as their leaders are interested.

Due to this, the author has publicly denounced elements that he considers propaganda, being, for example, against the traditional media. As an author and thinker, Chomsky believes that it is his duty to inform the population of what is really happening in the world so that citizens can make informed decisions about their own lives.

Human nature

Most of the problems that Chomsky had at the beginning of his career were due to the fact that he defended a theory of human nature very different from that prevailing at that time in fields such as psychology.

Most authors defended the idea of ​​the "tabula rasa"; that is, they thought that at birth our brain is totally blank and we have to learn everything through experience.

Chomsky, on the contrary, defended that part of our knowledge is innate, and is transmitted at the genetic level. The ability to master language would be one of these knowledge already present at birth, but there would be many more.

At the same time, this psychologist has defended all his life the idea that language is one of the most important capacities of human beings, since it has a great influence on the way we perceive the world.

For him, having a mother tongue or another causes great differences in the way we understand what surrounds us and the way we behave.

Main works

During his long career as a researcher and author, Noam Chomsky has published a large number of works on different topics. Some of the most important are the following.

General works

- The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature (2006).

- What kind of creatures are we? (2015).

Politics

- The responsibility of intellectuals (1967).

- The political economy of human rights (1979).

- The culture of terrorism (1988).

- The common good (1998).

- Chomsky on anarchism (2005).

Language

- Syntactic structures (1957).

- Language and mind (1968).

- Rules and representations (1980).

- The minimalist program (1995).

- On language (1998).

- The architecture of language (2000).

References

1. "Noam Chomsky" in: Britannica. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from Britannica: britannica.com.
2. "Noam Chomsky" in: Biography. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from Biography: biography.com.
3. "Noam Chomsky" in: Famouos Scientists. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from Famous Scientists: famousscientists.org.
4. "Noam Chomsky" in: Good Therapy. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from Good Therapy: goodtherapy.org.
5. "Noam Chomsky" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: July 22, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.