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| | Chapter 3: Humboldt and the Cartesian Tradition |
 | | The year after Cartesian Linguistics appeared, Hans Aarslef, regarded as a leading scholar in the field, published a major book "in which," Chomsky writes, "he described traditional universal grammar as solely `Cartesian' in origin, completely ignoring the quite obvious Renaissance and earlier origins that are emphasized in Cartesian Linguistics" (31 Mar. 1995). |
 | | The term "Cartesian" is not used here according to its generally accepted definition; Chomsky extends that definition to encompass, as he puts it, "a certain collection of ideas which were not expressed by Descartes, [were] rejected by followers of Descartes, and many first expressed by anti-Cartesians" (31 Mar. 1995). |
 | | The work that Chomsky assigned to the Cartesian corpus, and the tradition of research that the Cartesians had upheld, was, in Chomsky's opinion, more pertinent than the research of contemporary scholars, and certainly more useful than that which was being produced in the field of the history of linguistics. |
| cognet.mit.edu /library/books/chomsky/chomsky/3/6.html (915 words) |
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