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Charles Darwin - 1809 to 1882 - Contributions to the World pt. 1
Charles Darwin lived between the years 1809 and 1882 and is known as one of the most influential scientific persons to have lived. Contributions of his include: "On the Origin of Species", a foundational book on evolutionary biology and the concept of "natural selection" within the philosophy of science. His theory covering this idea was, at the time, a distinctly different idea to that of Creationism, which was very common among thinkers of the day. -
Charles Darwin - 1809 to 1882 - Contributions to the World pt. 2
In this book, he explained that the different animal species that he had seen across the world were connected to one another through the idea of “common ancestors”. He published multiple editions of this theory, each with progressively stronger arguments to back its case. His theory caught the attention of many people across the various realms of theology and academia. The academics supported him while he drew the ire of the religious who felt he scorned their beliefs. -
Charles Darwin - 1809 to 1882 - Contributions to the World pt. 3
Though he disagreed with Creationism and sought to prove it false, he did not discount the existence of God. In his conclusion, he wrote ““I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator”, signifying his attempts to relate the ideas of his theory of evolution to his beliefs in God. -
Charles Darwin - 1809 to 1882 - Contributions to the World pt. 4
In 1871, twelve years after his publication of "On the Origin of Species", Charles Darwin published a second book titled "The Descent of Man". In this publishing, he delved specifically into the evolution of man through common ape-ancestors. This drew criticism and mocking, but also widespread support for his theories due to the factual nature by which he accounted for the gradual evolution from ape to man. -
Noam Chomsky - 1928 to Present - Contributions to the World pt. 1
Noam Chomsky - The Structure of Language Avram Noam Chomsky, "The Father of Modern Linguistics", was born just before the Great Depression in December of 1928. He is widely held as one of the most eminent contributors to an array of fields within science, namely within the field of Linguistics - “The scientific study of language”. -
Noam Chomsky - 1928 to Present - Contributions to the World pt. 3
One of the premises Chomsky sets to lay out within his manuscript is that
a linguist’s goal should be to define the grammar for the language that they are studying. From that, they will then be able to create a generalized method to select the best possible grammar and devices within the language in order with its corpus, or speech database. -
Noam Chomsky - 1928 to Present - Contributions to the World pt. 2
Initially, his publications received tepid reviews from his peers in the field of linguistics, leaving him to publish his works in non-linguistic journals (Barsky). His first major linguistic contribution - perhaps one of the largest within modern linguistics - titled Syntactic Structures was a manuscript published by Mouton & Co., a publisher based in the Netherlands. Within Syntactic Structures, Chomsky detailed his attempts to formulate a “formalized theory of linguistic structure”. -
Noam Chomsky - 1928 to Present - Contributions to the World pt. 5
Chomsky instead argues that linguistically, humans are born with an innate ability to understand grammatical structures. This ability causes children to have the understanding of language necessary to comprehend words or phrases they have never encountered. Chomsky’s theory took hold within psychology and psycholinguistics and became the prevailing view in these fields thereafter. -
Noam Chomsky - 1928 to Present - Contributions to the World pt. 4
Chomsky also presented a critique and alternate theory to B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior shortly after publishing Syntactic Structures. Within his critique, he opposes Skinner’s idea of a “clean slate” in a newborn human’s brain, linguistically-speaking. Skinner presents that verbal repetition is how young children learn to understand language and complex grammar from their environment; i.e. hearing a phrase over and over to learn grammatical structure. -
Charles Darwin - Citations 1
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Appleton,, 1884, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hw2q92.
"IWonder - Charles Darwin: Evolution and the Story of Our Species.” BBC News, BBC, www.bbc.com/timelines/zq8gcdm#zg88wmn -
Charles Darwin - Citations 2
Kindt, Julia, and Tanya Latty. “Guide to the Classics: Darwin's On the Origin of Species.” The Conversation, The Conversation, 30 May 2018, theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-darwins-on-the-origin-of-species-96533
Mayr, Ernst. “Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought.” Scientific American, 24 Nov. 2009, www.scientificamerican.com/article/darwins-influence-on-modern-thought/. -
Noam Chomsky - Citations 1
Barsky, Robert F. Noam Chomsky: a Life of Dissent. MIT Press, 1997. Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. Mouton, 1957. Steinberg, Danny D., et al. Psycholinguistics: Language, Mind, and World. Routledge, 2013.
