NP interesting post re Chomsky

[Doug Millison]

This appeared on the PSYART list, which Holland moderates.

Concidentally, I was in and out of the W. 72d St. subway station he
mentions many times during my stay in New York over the holidays -- just
two blocks from my brother's house; also coincidentally, that's the
neighborhood where Pynchon is said to have lived for many years.

Enjoy.

-Doug




Date:         Tue, 8 Jan 2002 18:16:46 -0500
From: Norman Holland <nholland at ufl.edu>
Subject:      genius
To: PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU


Dear Norman Kiell and other PSYARTers,

Norman asked about experiences with geniuses, e.g., Chomsky, and yes, I
have had
experience of a genius and as it happens, Chomsky.

He and I were beginning professors together at MIT in the late '50s and early
'60s.  I was interested in his work, and I attended the paper presentations  by
his group Friday afternoons.  Unlike humanities professors, he assembled over
time a team, a group of people who did his kind of thing: Morris Halle, Jay
Keyser, Jerry Fodor, Jerry Katz, Louis Kampf and people outside, like me, Dick
Ohmann, Hilary Putnam and probably still others.  Since then this has grown
into
a whole department.  Noam and the rest would often confront us English teachers
in the cafeteria, demanding, Would you say this?  Is this sentence grammatical?
Does this sound possible to you?   We were the "native speakers" on which the
early generative grammar relied.

A lot of the group had connections with the Society of Fellows at Harvard
(where
Noam and Louis and Dick had been Junior Fellows, the cushiest fellowship then
around).  I was on the fringes of the group, and I never shared in the Saturday
morning basketball game being an asportual myself, but I did enjoy the parties
at Louis' apartment at 8 Plympton St.

I always tell my students that in my 45+ years in academia I've met only one
true Einstein-style genius, and that was Noam.  As a colleague here described
him, he's the only person my colleague could think of who has made major, even
revolutionary, contributions to two fields, in his case, linguistics and left
politics.  He was and is stunningly intelligent, his mind easily racing around
in intricate hyperlogical argument.

Yet he was and, so far as I can tell, is a rather quiet, modest man.  He was
clearly the leader of his intellectual group, smarter than anyone around,
yet he
wore his intelligence lightly.  He might disagree with someone but he never put
anybody down harshly. Nevertheless, he could be quite forceful (I gathered) at
philosophical and linguistics conferences with people who disagreed with his
linguistics and sarcastic in private about them.  He and Morris pressed their
linguistic claims on the field unremittingly.

Noam lived then and, so far as I know, lives now a similarly quiet and modest
private life, married to Carol with two daughters and going to a small place on
the Cape.  At the group's parties he was never the raucous one and usually left
before people got really drunk.

Some of my friends, less left than I, find his speaking style in his political
presentations snide and sarcastic.  Yes, I know what they mean, and I think he
passed premature judgment on the Afghan War, although events may prove him
right.  I can understand the snideness as resulting from many years, starting
from when he was a teenager, of witnessing the detestable hypocrisy and
injustice of our political process.  And, in his presentations, he always has a
mass of facts at his disposal to justify his views--more than I can say for
most
people who write about politics and more than most politicians.  Way back then
he shocked me by asserting roundly that the New York Times was really an arm of
the State Department--I wish I been persuaded, for, it seems to me, recent
years
and a comparison between our newspaper of record and foreign newspapers (e.g.,
Le Monde, the Guardian) have proved him right.

For those of you who know New York, Noam says he learned his politics at
the 72d
St. West Side subway stop.  There is a newsstand at the front of the exit where
everybody comes out, and everybody stops and buys the newspaper there.
There is
a newsstand back of the exit and nobody buys the paper there, and this second
stand was owned by Noam's uncle.  As a boy Noam would come over from
Philadelphia and hang around the newsstand with his uncle and his uncle's
buddies, a bunch of Upper West Side European socialists.  And the rest is
history.

That was, of course, long before I knew him and I was never one of his closer
friends.  Nevertheless, as I say, to the extent I knew him my overwhelming
impression was of quiet but determined capability.  You would never have
guessed, simply meeting him, that this guy was the genius he was and is--not
until you talked to him for ten minutes or so.

                        --Best, Norm
Norm Holland
nholland at ufl.edu