Knowledge of language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use

By Noam Chomsky

For many years, I have been intrigued by two problems concerning human knowledge. The first is the problem of explaining how we can know so much given that we have such limited evidence. The second is the problem of explaining how we can know so little, given that we have so much evidence. The first problem we might call “Plato’s problem,” the second, “Orwell’s problem,” an analogue in the domain of social and political life of what might be called “Freud’s problem.”

The essence of Plato’s problem was well expressed by Bertrand Russell in his later work when he raised the question: “How comes it that human beings, whose contact with the world are brief and personal and limited, are nevertheless able to know as much as they do know?” In certain domains of thought and understanding, our knowledge is vast in scope, highly specific and richly articulated in character, and in large measure shared with others who have similar background and experience. The same is true of systems of belief and expectation, modes of interpretation and integration of experience, and more generally what we may call “cognitive systems,” only part of which qualify as actual knowledge. …

In the modern era, the cult of state worship has frequently taken on the character of earlier form of religious faith, not only in totalitarian states. (xxvii)

The study of language … has frequently been understood as an inquiry into the nature of mind and thought on the assumption that “languages are the best mirror of human mind” (Leibniz). (p. 1)

I believe the study of mathematics, which should be much more ancient and much more universal than human language, offers a better approach to understand the nature of mind.