Profile Noam Chomsky’s Role in Biological Theory: A Mixed Legacy D. Kimbrough Oller School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology University of Memphis Memphis, TN, USA koller@memphis.edu A Diverse Intellectual Figure On the occasion of his 80th birthday (December 7, 2008), this profile is provided on Noam Chomsky, one of the most cele- brated intellectual figures of this or any time. 1 There is already so much biographical material written about him (see, e.g., Barsky 1997), that it is unnecessary to repeat the chronology of his background. The task is instead to look back on his career and, appropriately for this journal, to assess his impact in biology. This focus encourages only a passing mention of Chom- sky’s extensive writings and lectures on geopolitics, where he has been a prominent and influential critic of American foreign policy for many years (see, e.g., Chomsky 1969). History as written in the years to come may be kind to Chomsky, him- self an American, because he has stood fast for generations, speaking and writing stridently against military and economic aggression, and in favor of a rational, internationally informed approach to national self-interest and global political health. He was an outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam, just as he is currently energetically opposed to American military action in Iraq, and these positions have accorded him notable international stature and acclaim. If history develops a realistic picture of his scientific achievements, however, the judgment will surely be mixed. The controversy surrounding his work in linguistics is unpar- alleled within any realm of science in my own experience, and it is of considerable interest to evaluate the reasons for split opinions existing about his contributions. To understand the divergence of opinion, it may be helpful to begin by draw- ing a distinction between two domains of linguistic theory. In the “structural domain,” the task is to characterize princi- ples that govern the formation of well-formed units (syllables, words, sentences, etc.) in human languages, as well as the abstract and concrete structures and elements of which mod- ern, mature human languages are composed. In “the domain of origins,” the task is to characterize the roots of language, its sources and patterns of change in both ontogeny and phy- logeny, and its relations with communication systems in other species. These two domains are conceptually differentiable, although ultimately successful scientific work on the nature of language will require a coordinated approach where linguistic structures are interpreted and formulated in the context of their sources in ontogeny and phylogeny, including the physical and neurological requirements of their implementation. The essence of my own reaction to Chomsky’s work has a split personality aspect which can be parsed in accord with these two domains. In brief, his contributions in the struc- tural domain have been far-reaching and groundbreaking, and in significant ways they have been undeniably positive. The fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics, both of which can of course be viewed as realms of biology, have profited in many ways from his creative developments and energies in the struc- tural domain. The role of Chomsky in the domain of origins of language, however, cannot be portrayed with such predom- inant positivity. In fact, in the search for biological roots of language, the Chomskyan agenda has been largely unfruitful and has tended to discourage empirical research. Achievements in the Structural Domain A philosophical distinction proposed by Chomsky lies at the heart of his philosophical and scientific approach. In sepa- rating linguistic “competence” from linguistic “performance” (Chomsky 1965), he sought to accomplish two goals: (1) to fo- cus attention on the knowledge of speakers of natural languages about the well-formedness and grammaticality of possible ut- terances in those languages, and (2) to provide a justifica- tion for directing attention away from the “how” of language, the biological capabilities that make it possible to implement knowledge in speaking and understanding languages. He fo- cused his own work sharply and exclusively on competence, August 1, 2008; accepted August 3, 2008 344 Biological Theory 3(4) 2008, 344–350. c 2009 Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research