properties, we face a rather typical problem of natural science, namely, the
problem of appropriate idealization and abstraction. In an effort to determine
the nature of one of these interacting systems, we must abstract away from
the contribution of others to the actual performance that can be observed.This clearly indicates that, by abstracting away from other cognitive systems
interacting with the system of grammatical rules (knowledge of language),
it has become virtually impossible to conduct any causal analysis of language
production and understanding, reducing the fi rst problem of the knowledge of
language in (2a) to formal analysis, while transferring causal analysis of linguistic
processes to (2c) and (2d).
This analysis of the discrepancies suggests that “formal mechanisms for gener-
ating the sentences of a language” assumed in linguistic analysis, such as phrase
structure rules or Merge, do not contain the notion of causality, while physical
mechanisms assumed in (2d) (and probably also in (2c)) do, as those assumed
in other biological sciences, such as neurobiology and molecular biology, do.
Finally, viewed from this perspective, the Minimalist Program is an attempt
to attain an amalgamation of non-causal formal mechanisms in linguistic analysis
with causal physical mechanisms of linguistic and other biological processes so
that biolinguistics will be a full-fledged modern science of language.
4 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have attempted to show that a perspective from the history
and philosophy of science, particularly that of the Scientifi c Revolution, makes
it possible to unify at least some seemingly unrelated or even curious method-
ological characteristics of biolinguistics occasionally mentioned in the literature
into a coherent picture so that it could serve to elucidate the current status of
biolinguistics as a biological science.
Notes
*I am grateful to Chuck Brown, Cindy Brown, Koji Fujita, Jeffry Gayman, Yasuhiko
Kato, and John Matthews for invaluable comments and stylistic suggestions. My
thanks also go to Yurie Murayama for clerical assistance.
1 Recently, for example, Al-Mutairi (2014: 2–3) observed that it is “necessary to
fi rst take a broad view of the general development of Chomskyan linguistics, with
the primary aim of clarifying some of the misconceptions that have been expressed
by (ironically enough) some well-known popularisers of Chomsky’s work.” In
fact, Al-Mutairi takes issue with the account of the development of generative
grammar by Bo eckx and Hornstein (2010). See Bo eckx and Hornstein (2010)
and Al -Mutairi (2014) for discussion.
2 Schuster (1990: 231) notes, for example, that Copernicus should not be simply
considered to represent the fi rst stage of the Scientifi c Revolution, but should be
interpreted carefully in the historical context. Cf. Koyré (1957) and Henry (2008).
3 Westfall (1971) expressed a similar view about the Scientifi c Revolution nearly
40 years earlier. Westfall recognized two major themes dominating the Scientifi c
On the current status of biolinguistics 183