暗微幽光

Sense of politics and sense of science

A speech error temporarily paused the process of president Obama sworn in his duty in the inaugural day. That is the situation the president followed Chief Justice Roberts’ words “solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.” Mr. Obama had a pause after “execute” because he found the “faithfully” before “execute” was removed. This caused the other sworn in at the day after the inaugural day and Steven Pinker’s comment on this politics of language. One blogger criticized Pinker made a comment on the political perspective of Roberts instead of linguistic analysis, but a reader of Pinker’s books would realize this is his style. He always reveal his political orientation, medium libertarian, in his articles talking about the human nature or the evolution of human mind. A recent case is an article of individual genome on the New York Times.

The mostly interested part is the association of the political opinion and the perspective of science for a scientist. Pinker’s viewpoint to language establishes on the conceptual quirks stored in human mind. He argued that these quirks are the product of evolution and are inhered generation by generation. The unlimited combinations of quirks contribute the unlimited expressions of human languages. This argument is contrary to the generative grammar proposed by Noam Chomsky who is a famous left wing intellectual. Chomsky also has a gap in science and politics between him and Burrhus Skinner who believes a well designed reward system will improve the quality of individual behavior.  Across three generations, these minds who give extraordinary contribution to the modern psychology and cognitive science have so many differences in each aspect. So many different minds compete with each other in the circumstance each mind perform their potential as they can. I have to say it is why the US have been leading the development of science (at least in my domain) till present.

Is there other society providing  the  distinguished mind  contribute their potential regardless the political view? I think this is an interesting issue for more observations and experiences.