What Kind of Creatures Are We? by Noam Chomsky is a series of four articles concerning Chomsky's area of expertise. Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I have read plenty of Chomsky as an undergraduate and graduate student in political science. He is well known as a philosopher and political thinker in that field. I have always been interested in Chomsky's writings in linguistics as he is so articulate in his writings outside his field. Language is a remarkable thing that humans use to relate complex thoughts. Animals may make patterns of noises recognizable to those in the herd such as "danger" but, humans deliver complex ideas and thoughts that are understood and carry a definite format. We can tell stories and preserve our history. In fact, we can use the same word to mean many different things and still understand. The word "set" has 464 definitions according to the Oxford Dictionary yet we do not confuse mathematics, tennis, concrete, and placing an item.

The first two sections, "What is Language" and What Can We Understand", cover the use of words and the organization of words and their meanings. Both sections are detailed and in interesting. In fact, the entire book is is detailed and documented. Nearly half the book is documentation. Interestingly in the second section of the book, Chomsky compares the brain and the gut brain -- the system of biochemical signaling of the digestive tract and the nervous system. It is the only system of the body that can operate without input from the brain.

The third section, "What is the Common Good", returns to the Chomsky I am familiar with, the political Chomsky. The fourth section, The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden", brings science into the discussion and the cartesian and Newtonian and how our understanding evolved and was limited.

Language is something we take for granted, but like turning on a light, it is much more involved than flipping a switch. Chomsky gives the reader the befits of his half century of experience as a leader in linguistics. An interesting and detailed read.



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Although part of the "Columbia Themes in Philosophy" series, this book originated in the 2013 John Dewey lectures that Noam Chomsky delivered at Columbia University.

Chomsky used these talks more to sum up his thinking than to present new material. Thus, the book is a compact presentation of where Chomsky sits near the end of his life.

The writing is mostly clear, but the ideas are dense on the page. Chomsky and Columbia University Press have provided, thankfully, extensive citations and a good index. The series editor, Akeel Bilgrami, has also written a foreword of almost twenty pages that introduces and summarizes the material.

Another way to approach this book is to read Stanley Fish's article in The New York Times of December 9, 2013, which at one time was, and may still be at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/opinion/fish-scholarship-and-politics-the-case...

This book is very much worth the effort required to read it. ( )

Chomskyan thought arranged into 4 chapters I would crudely tag as linguistics ("What is language?"), psychology ("What can we understand"), sociology ("What is the common good?"), and philosophy of mind ("The mysteries of nature: how deeply hidden?"). Of these, the 3rd is unusual in that it combines some of Chomsky's linguistic ideas with some of his political ones. The 4th chapter is the most difficult and dubious, mostly concerned with the ideas of long-dead thinkers; e.g., much is made of the once-regarded nonphysicality of Newton's treatment of gravity, but there is no mention of how profoundly the issue was transformed by Einstein's relativity.

Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig

I’m always puzzled when I read statements like Howard Gardner’s “Noam Chomsky is arguably the most influential thinker of our time”, or the Observer’s “[Chomsky is t]he world’s greatest public intellectual”. He may indeed be te “most prominent critic of imperialism”, as the Guardian put it. But if you look at the real world effect Chomsky has, his influence seems meager and pathetic: the Western world is still heavily involved in warfare in the Middle East, and the inequality gap has been widening since the 1980s, and still very much is – both within the Western world, as globally.

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What Kind of Creatures Are We? is marketed by Columbia University Press as a kind of summary of Chomsky’s work, spanning over half a century. (...) This book is divided in 4 parts: What is language?, What can we understand?, What is the common good? and The mysteries of nature: How deeply hidden? It has 127 pages of actual text, and – indicative of Chomsky’s wide-ranging research – 15 pages of reference notes, plus an index of 20 pages. Although the third part deals with politics – there is little new to be found for the reader familiar with the political Chomsky here, with a slight emphasis on John Dewey – this book is mainly an epistemological work, tracing its origins to the advent of modern science. Newton, Hume and Locke are featured a lot. Really, a lot. There are 39 references to Newton in the index. That’s roughly one mention on every third page.

I found the first 3 parts (...) ( )