Chris Knight. Unpublished typescript, c.1982
‘Science’, according to Leon Trotsky, ‘is knowledge that endows us with power.’[1] In the natural sciences, the search has been for power over natural forces and processes. Astronomy made possible the earliest calendars, predictions of eclipses, accurate marine navigation. The development of medical science permitted an increasing freedom from and conquest of disease. The modern advances of physics, chemistry and the other natural sciences have today given us an immense power to harness natural forces of all kinds and have utterly transformed the world in which we live.
by Chris Knight
University of East London
In 1844, following a four-year voyage around the world, Charles Darwin confided to a close friend that he had come to a dangerous conclusion. For seven years, he wrote, he had been ‘engaged in a very presumptuous work’, perhaps ‘a very foolish one’. He had noticed that on each of the Galapagos Islands , the local finches ate slightly different foods, and had correspondingly modified beaks. In South America , he had examined many extraordinary fossils of extinct animals. Pondering the significance of all this, he had felt forced to change his mind about the origin of species. To his friend, Darwin wrote: ‘I am almost convinced (quite contrary to the opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable’.
Noam Chomsky ranks among the leading intellectual figures of modern times. He has changed the way we think about what it means to be human, gaining a position in the history of ideas – at least according to his supporters – comparable with that of Galileo or Descartes. Since launching his intellectual assault against the academic orthodoxies of the 1950s, he has succeeded – almost single-handedly – in revolutionizing linguistics and establishing it as a modern science. Such victories, however, have come at a cost. The stage was set for the ensuing ‘Linguistics Wars’1 when, as a young anarchist, Chomsky published his first book. He might as well have thrown a bomb. ‘The extraordinary and traumatic impact of the publication of Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky in 1957’, recalls one witness,2 ‘can hardly be appreciated by one who did not live through this upheaval’. From that moment, the battles have continued to rage.
Download Decoding Chomsky in PDF format [100KB]
NOAM CHOMSKY ranks among the leading intellectual figures of modern times. He has changed the way we think about what it means to be human, gaining a position in the history of ideas – at least according to his supporters – comparable with that of Darwin or Descartes. Since launching his intellectual assault against the academic orthodoxies of the 1950s, he has succeeded – almost single-handedly – in revolutionising linguistics and establishing it as a modern science.
Download Noam Chomsky: Politics or Science? in PDF format [72KB]
Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group concludes his examination of a political enigma.
Link to the complete article in Weekly Worker
Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group continues his examination of the Chomsky enigma.
Link to the complete article in Weekly Worker
How is that a powerful critic of US imperialism has been regarded as a valued asset by the US military? In the first of three articles Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group begins his examination of the life and work of Noam Chomsky.
Link to the complete article in Weekly Worker
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO WINGS OF FEMINISM
This article reflects a major division in the women’s movement in Western Europe during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Here, Christine Delphy, author of The Main Enemy (Women’s Research and Resources Centre Publications, London, 1977) takes issue with Annie Leclerc, author of Parole de Femme. The issue was the role of ideology in the struggle for women’s emancipation. Leclerc argued, in effect, that women were oppressed because they had internalised oppressive ideas. Delphy argued on the contrary that the problem lay not in women’s ideas — but in the material dominance of men over women in society.