SOURCE: “Chomsky and His Critics,” in New York Review of Books, October 23, 1980, pp. 47-50.

In the following review of Rules and Representations and Language and Learning, Hacking provides analysis of Chomsky's linguistic innovations, critical challenges to his conclusions, and discussion of Chomsky's debate with Swiss scholar Jean Piaget.

From time to time, ever since Plato, grammar has been more than the bane of schoolchildren or a topic for scholars. It owes its present prominence outside linguistics to some theses stated twenty-five years ago by Noam Chomsky. There is, he said, a universal grammar common to all human languages. Children are born with it: their inheritance explains the ease with which they pick up the language they hear around them. Universal grammar is like an organ of the body whose structure is genetically determined. It is a characteristic of the human mind and an essential part of the discontinuity...