1 Introduction
Generative grammar, currently known as biolinguistics, and henceforth referred
to as biolinguistics, emerged as the embodiment of a naturalistic approach to
the study of language in the early 1950s. Chomsky (2000: 106) contends that
the naturalistic approach to the study of language and mind “considers language
and similar phenomena to be elements of the natural world to be studied by
ordinary methods of empirical inquiry.” It is based on the assumption that mind
and language are aspects of the world on a par with “chemical,” “optical” or
“electrical” aspects of the world which have long been the objects of study in
natural sciences, and that there is “no metaphysical divide” between these aspects
of the world. Thus, it is quite natural that biolinguistics has been claimed since
its inception to be a science of language.
There are, however, discrepancies even among generative linguists in their
understanding of the nature of biolinguistics as a science.^1 Why is it that there
are such discrepancies concerning the nature of biolinguistics, whose method-
ological legitimacy Chomsky (2000:76) considers to be based on truisms of
science? This seems to be at least partly a result of the tacit assumption of an
ahistorical notion of science that the methodological or conceptual discussions
of biolinguistics so far tend to presuppose. This attitude allows for a degree of
arbitrariness in characterizing and assessing the current status of biolinguistics
as a science.
In view of these facts, it is quite interesting to note Friedman’s (1993:37)
observation that “Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
forever changed our appreciation of the philosophical importance of the history
of science,” so that “careful and sensitive attention to the history of science must
remain absolutely central in any serious philosophical consideration of science.”
Furthermore, Fr iedman (1993: 38) claims that it is legitimate to extend this
“lesson of Kuhn’s” to the history of philosophy:
Now I do not suppose that this claim about the relevance of conceptual
revolutions in science to the history of philosophy is a controversial one.
Indeed, it is now becoming more and more common for historians of