As Chomsky (2007: 6) clearly states, the formal nature of t he model of
grammar remains the same in the Minimalist Program. (Here “the system”
corresponds to “the Merge-based system”.)
But the system implies no temporal dimension. In this respect, generation
of expressions is similar to other recursive processes such as construction
of formal proof. Intuitively, the proof “begins” with axioms and each line
is added to earlier lines by rules of inference or additional axioms. But this
implies no temporal ordering. It is simply a description of the structural
properties of the geometrical object “proof.”From the perspective of the Scientifi c Revolution, the formal nature of mecha-
nisms of biolinguistics is rather expected, since, like Galileo, Chomsky stopped
seeking the “causation of behavior” when he started developing biolinguistics.
On the other hand, as philosophers of science, Craver and Darden (2013: 5),
for example, states that “w hatever the origins of this mechanistic perspective,
and however it is related to the austere forms of mechanism that developed in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is now so thoroughly woven into
the fabric of contemporary biology one might easily forget that biology could
have taken a different form.”
Furthermore, as Glennan (2009:315) states, in biological sciences, such as neu-
robiology and molecular biology, “mechanism is undoubtedly a causal concept,
in the sense that ordinary definitions and philosophical analyses explicate the
concept in terms of other causal concepts such as production and interaction.”
This difference in the ontic status of mechanism between biolinguistics and
other biological sciences seems to suggest that biolinguistics as a biological sci-
ence is still at a stage roughly equivalent to modern science prior to Newtonian
dynamics, while such biological sciences as neurobiology and molecular biology
are at a more advanced stage of modern science.
3.4 Basic questions in ethology and biolinguistics
In order to further clarify why mechanisms of biolinguistics are different from
those of other biological sciences, let us compare the basic questions of ethol-
ogy and those of biolinguistics.
According to Bolhuis and Giraldeau (2005: 2), ethology, currently oft en called
classical ethology, is the study of animal behavior, which “became an independent
scientific discipline,” “in the middle of the twentieth century,” “mainly through
the efforts of two biologists, the Austrian Konrad Lorenz (1903–89) and the
Dutchman Niko Tinbergen (1907–8 8).”
Tinbergen (1963/2009: 2) characteri zes ethology in methodo logical terms
as follows:
In the course of thirty years devoted to ethological studies I have become
increasingly convinced that the fairest characterisation of Ethology is “the180 Masanobu Ueda