Noam Chomsky Quotes
If the mutation is partially transmitted to offspring, they too would have the advantage. And over time it might have come to dominate a small breeding group.
Chomsky, Noam. The Science of Language: Interviews with James McGilvray. Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 14.
This quotation from this letter was one of the key items of evidence showing that Wallace had independently developed the concept of Evolution before Darwin published his famous treatise. Darwin began formulating his theory of natural selection in the late 1830s but he went on working quietly on it for twenty years. He wanted to amass a wealth of evidence before publicly presenting his idea. During those years he corresponded briefly with Wallace (right), who was exploring the wildlife of South America and Asia. Wallace supplied Darwin with birds for his studies and decided to seek Darwin's help in publishing his own ideas on evolution. He sent Darwin his theory in 1858, which, to Darwin's shock, nearly replicated Darwin's own…. Joseph Dalton Hooker arranged for both Darwin's and Wallace's theories to be presented to a meeting of the Linnaean Society in 1858. However, Wallace seems to have been onto the idea of evolution over a decade before as this quotation shows.
As early as this was in scientific history, he essentially described the process whereby new species are formed by the mutation from the old series.
This is a very important quotation in the history of science. Note that he has the concept of evolution and mutation before Darwin published his his Origin of Species. Darwin had probably come to these conclusions at the time that Lawrence gave this lecture. And of course Darwin had a much broader concept and much data to back it up. But this was one of the great insights in science.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
