century to that plane of achievement which has led historians to speak of a
scientifi c revolution. And modern science continues to pursue its effective
course within the framework thus established.Westfall’s explanation indicates that, by introducing a notion of causality called
“force,” Newton integrated mathematical description and mechanical philosophy,
which were not in harmony with each other, into Newtonian dynamics, the
fi rst conceptual framework of modern science, although “the ultimate reality
of force” remains to be explored.
In the next section, I will show that, viewed from the perspective of the Sci-
entific Revolution briefly reviewed in this section, some of the methodological
characteristics of biolinguistics can be accounted for in a unified way.
3 Methodological characteristics of biolinguistics
Chomsky repeatedly states that the cognitive revolution of the 1950s consti-
tutes the reshaping of the achievements and insights of what he calls “the fi rst
cognitive revolution,” which took place as a part of the Scientifi c Revolution
of the seventeenth century.^6 Chomsky (2000: 6), for example, expresses this
view as follows:
The “cognitive revolution” renewed and reshaped many of the insights,
achievements, and quandaries of what we might call “the fi rst cognitive
revolution” of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, which was part of the
scientifi c revolution that so radically modifi ed our understanding of the world.In fact, Henry (2008: 80) notes that lead ing mechanical philosophers, such as
Descartes and Hobbes, extended their approach to “the explanation of vital
phenomena and animal (including human) behavior,” beyond mechanics, kinetics
and dynamics, with which it was originally connected.
Given this, Chomsky’s view simply suggests that biolinguistics has been devel-
oping toward a modern science of language virtually along the lines analogous to
those along which modern science developed in the Scientific Revolution of the
seventeenth century. I will show that, viewed in this light, at least a few other
seemingly arbitrary methodological characteristics of biolinguistics discussed so
far are naturally accounted for in a unified way.
3.1 Synthesis of two traditions
Chomsky (1968/2006: 20–21, 57) st ates that ther e have been “two major
traditions that have enriched the study of language in their separate and very
different ways.” One is “the tradition of philosophical grammar that fl ourished
from the seventeenth century through romanticism.” Chomsky (1968/2006:
14) characteri zes philosophi cal grammar as “a kind of ‘natural philosophy’ or,
in modern terms, ‘natural science’,” which seeks explanation rather than “the
176 Masanobu Ueda