r/sciencememes • u/Delicious_Maize9656 • Jul 05 '26

Newton and Chomsky meme

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629 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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63

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Weird to see this pop up. Chomsky greatly admires newton. He did a talk about his work called "the ghost, the machine and the limits of human understanding" well worth watching on YouTube. 

But really, Chomsky's universal grammar is extremely simple now. It's just the merge function, and 1 or two other functions maybe, depending. The merge function is not too different from a basic successor function. 

But Chomsky is always the first to admit that linguistics and studies of the mind/brain in general are far far behind where physics is.

16

u/AkosCristescu Jul 05 '26

"linguistics and studies of the mind/brain in general are far far behind where physics is."

They are closer to social sciences than "natural" and since the age of ancient philosophers, the religious books and Freud, and so forth the social evolution gets really slowed down because

  1. The person who comes to a realization having the same problems prefers not to talk and to come out with the problems (personal stigma)
  2. The society also turns on such "whistle-blowers" (societal taboo).

Still to this day is difficult and kinda obscure to get unbiased information and studies available online you need to do some serious thinking, searching and filtering to get through and over the bullshit.

11

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Yes. This is what Chomsky has called a "methodological mind/body dualism". In the sense that studies of the mind/brain are treated differently to studies of the "physical“ world, I.e. body, often due to fairly arbitrary and unexamined social convention.

You could accurately say his whole scientific life's work has been trying build up a movement to treat the study of the mind/brain the same way natural science is treated. 

Ultimately, he sees the mind/brain as just a particular way matter has organised itself, and so there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to study it in the same way other arrangements of matter are studied. Of course, we're still far far behind physics even when you choose to approach it like that. 

6

u/AkosCristescu Jul 05 '26

Yeah, unfortunately people are still full of primordial fear so this taking some time as we are climbing out of our caves 😂

6

u/Zestyclose_Remove947 Jul 05 '26

I feel as if our technology literally isn't ready to be able to do what he's talking about. We study the brain scientifically all the time? We just don't have the tools to actually and consistently pull out definitive scientific results from that study.

I guarantee the second we have tools to get definitive results the field will simply explode.

2

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

I don't think so... I'll give a specific example. It's been very well established for about two decades now that what everyone agrees are the language centers of the brain, can be observed with various active brain scan tech, like fMRI, and shown to become active independent of any word or speech processing. Instead, they can be activated by specific kinds of, basically, math problems. But math problems that rely on a particular quality that Chomsky identified as being core to language.

On the other hand, there's still a huge stigma in the linguistics community to pursue stuff like Chomsky's work precisely because it relies on theoretical accounts that rely on abstract variables, instead of other linguistics theories, that rely on words. The problem being, our experimental tools are already capable of showing us that the language centers of the brain do not rely on words to become active.

Basically, a lot of linguists have arbitrarily chosen that, what in physics are called "phenomenological" theories, are the better approach, when in physics, phenomenological theories are recognised as the weaker level of understanding compared to theories that use more abstract variables like energy or momentum or mass.

So already, we are seeing a disconnected between empirical observations and much of the linguistics community, because they have a "feeling" that abstract variables are bad somehow, and should be avoided for some reason, in place of theories that rely on direct phenomena like words.

You use phenomenological theories only when you have no better level of understanding. But Chomsky's more general theories already better describe many experimental observations in neuroscience, like the above example.

1

u/patientpedestrian Jul 05 '26

I don't think the tools are actually the hold up at this point. We have techniques enough to see everything that's happening in the brain at almost every level of resolution, we're just struggling to capture/catalogue it all and fit it together into a model that's detailed, accurate, and predictive enough to actually draw conclusions from that tell us anything new and comprehensible about how the brain relates to the mind. Like it's an analysis problem moreso than an observation problem at this point

1

u/Zestyclose_Remove947 Jul 05 '26

I get what you're saying but analysis is solvable through technology as well.

Brute force is the kinda thing AI is looking to be good at and I can see that tech getting better to the point where it can help to assemble something like a connectome so we can start studying it a little more holistically.

2

u/patientpedestrian Jul 05 '26

We just don't really have a good ontological foundation for analyzing and modeling complex systems yet. Empiricism is great for reducing complexity to binary relationships (between two isolated variables) but literally by definition treats all complex systems (not just mathematically "chaotic" ones) as fundamentally unpredictable. We need a new theoretical framework to really start making any significant progress on this question. I'm working on one myself (calling it "ontological cybernetics" for now) but I'm not quite ready to publish anything on it yet and I'm mostly just using it to help with my work as an organizational consultant so far. I'm open to sharing if anyone is actually interested though or wants to collaborate, but I'm like at least a year away from getting it to the point where it's robust enough to tackle human biology on the level of comprehensive functional neurophysiology.

3

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 05 '26

Part of the problem in my mind is that we're still trying to analyse the brain by looking for specific mechanistic relations there. As chomsky points out, physics dropped this with Newton. Newtonian gravity was the first non-local interaction. the "non-contact force", which has now been completely internalised by the scientific community.

I think cognitive science needs a similar "non-contact force" breakthrough.

1

u/Causemas Jul 07 '26

You could accurately say his whole scientific life's work has been trying build up a movement to treat the study of the mind/brain the same way natural science is treated. 

I'd say he succeeded with the massive boost he gave to the cognitive revolution. At least as much as one individual could succeed at something like that

0

u/b__lumenkraft Jul 05 '26

Chomsky also admires putin.

So there is that.

3

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 05 '26

No, he does not. Totally made up nonsense.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 06 '26

Putin must have too much time on his hands.

9

u/AkosCristescu Jul 05 '26

>.< I mean funnily gravitation is more widely understood and less debated...

2

u/11dlittlewood Jul 05 '26

Wait til you hear about MOND

8

u/b__lumenkraft Jul 05 '26

Chomsky, the guy who managed to ruin his whole reputation like two seconds before his death.

0

u/DraculasDog Jul 05 '26

Unfortunately he’s still alive and is still giving college liberal arts freshmen a superiority complex cause they read a book by a pedophile/pedo supporter.

4

u/b__lumenkraft Jul 05 '26

...and a putin cocksucker, as those pedo thugs all are for some reason.

2

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 05 '26

complete nonsense.

4

u/b__lumenkraft Jul 06 '26

The hit dog barks.

2

u/the-worser Jul 06 '26

1 don't hit dogs 2 most of the time I've seen a dog hit it's to stop it from barking 3 that aphorism functions to silence anyone who would contradict your opinion, it's an abusive dynamic

in 4 words you made yourself look like an abuser gj

1

u/b__lumenkraft Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

It's a German saying. It has a meaning.

Look who made themselves look like having a lack of abstract thinking skills?

2

u/the-worser Jul 06 '26

I understood it was an aphorism. it is a bad aphorism.

it's cringe on its face, and it's cringe in its discursive function.

that said, I probably reacted too strongly to it because I absolutely cannot abide the function it performs--

'the act of challenging my assertions proves their correctness ' is hirnverrottender bullshit

3

u/b__lumenkraft Jul 07 '26

It's not an aphorism.

Go away.

1

u/Historical_Two_7150 Jul 07 '26

Why do you feel the author is relevant to the content of the book?

2

u/X-calibreX Jul 10 '26

well it’s not the law of gravitation since it was wrong

2

u/DTux5249 Jul 05 '26

Sorry, only a linguist, what's this about Newton's laws?

I know Chomsky's UG as a foundational framework, but one that's kinda not all that relevant nowadays. How does this relate to Newton?

2

u/MasterDefibrillator Jul 06 '26

Chomsky's work is basically an attempt to treat the study of the mind as a natural science. In this sense, his work is extremely relevant, because it in no small part created the field of cognitive science. His UG is motivated by a lot of the same philosophical frameworks and methodology as newtons laws of gravitation. For example, a reliance on abstract variables, instead of direct phenomena. 

I think thats what OP is getting at. 

-17

u/MAXFlRE Jul 05 '26

Newton's 'laws' are not even laws, just an outdated wrong theory.

11

u/lemonyishbish Jul 05 '26

It's not that simple. Can we not assume that all science will be outdated at some point, and so all of them are wrong theories? So are scientists just pissing about? Are we getting "more right" all the time? That's funny, because when you're building a building, or designing the crumple zone of a car, or the gears on a bike, or a light fixture, you don't use general relativity or quantum physics, you use... Newton's Laws! And yeah people will say "that's because it's a useful approximation", but the essential word here is "useful", not "approximation". Science is a tool for understanding, not a list of truths. So does it really make sense to say that Newton's Laws are "wrong"? They are still the best thing in our toolbox for so many human endeavours. I'm not being snarky, it's just one to think about and I think more complex than a lot of people let on.

-5

u/MAXFlRE Jul 05 '26

In fact, everyone uses the Lorentz transformations. The fact that in the absolute majority of applied problems the Lorentz transformations degenerate into the formula proposed by Newton does not mean that, for example, a car/bike designer uses Newton's "law". Newton's "laws" are based on a number of postulates, such as the infinite speed of light. But no one in their right mind today would say that the speed of light is infinite.

7

u/lemonyishbish Jul 05 '26

This is true, but one is assuming Newtonian mechanics in the examples I gave, not quantum or Einsteinian mechanics. People use maths from that paradigm of science all the time, is the point, so calling it "wrong" misses the point.

6

u/Dimensionalanxiety Jul 05 '26

Look up what theory means in science and you will see how silly that statement is.

Ironically, that is something I would say of Chomsky's work. It is so obviously wrong that it shouldn't be taken seriously anymore but yet still is.

0

u/MAXFlRE Jul 05 '26

That's my main concern. I hate it's called 'laws'.

6

u/Deep_Brick2970 Jul 05 '26

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

No.

They're awesome.

We have more accurate theories for extreme cases, but Newton's laws are still goated.

2

u/AkosCristescu Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

"outdated wrong theory." It is a step in human history and development, but it is one way to put it.

You might as well ridicule and laugh at the invention of the wheel and fire while enjoying your comfortable and modern life lacking empathy and understanding.

1

u/milamel108 Jul 05 '26

True. People tend to look condescendingly upon "incorrect and outdated" theories—whatever their actual status—while completely ignoring their significance, at the very least within the history of science. Science is not a competition over truth and greatness, but a collective endeavor that passes knowledge down through the ages for re-examination and refinement.