Prof Noam Chomsky to deliver web talk on human capacity on Feb 9
ALIGARH : People would find it highly enlightening if a person of ordinary intellect and acuity makes a public address and if the person happens to be Noam Chomsk, then certainly it makes a big difference in the level of public exuberance. Yes, Professor Noam Chomsky will be expressing his invaluable thought and opinion in a web talk on “The Human Capacity: Language and Thought” on February 9, 2022.
Prof Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, social critic, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist and Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world. Prof Chomsky has authored more than 100 books. He has not only transformed the field of linguistics, his work has also influenced a broad array of academic fields such as cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, computer science, mathematics, childhood education, and anthropology. He has been conferred with various prestigious awards including the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal and the Ben Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.
Professor M Jahangir Warsi, Chairman, Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University informed that the web talk, organized by his department, aims at addressing the very notion of human capacity, a term to denote the elusive quality that makes humans so distinctive, which was coined by paleoanthropologist Alexander Marschak. He said when we inquire into this elusive quality, we find two striking properties: language and thought that we can grasp and study. This way, one can draw the conclusion that language is a system for generating thought, and thought is what is generated by language. Prof Chomsky will elucidate on this aspect of human capacity that has been resurrected in the “generative enterprise” and independently in the study of human evolution, he added.
Prof Warsi said that interested people can attend the web talk on February 9 at 7 pm by logging on to http://meet.google.com/cvq-mcsf-xhm.