>More Chomsky, from the Frontline interview: "n fact, there is almost
>nothing in the social sciences that ought to be called a theory.
>Human affairs are too complicated."
>
>How can you think and talk without theories, even ones you don't
>recognize as such?
>
Well, you can't. But People have different standards for what counts as a "theory." Chomsky's is mathematical and exceptionless. The philosopher Donald Davidson of Berkeley has developed over the years an argument that there can be no explanatory, as opposed to normative, theories in the human "sciences," at least in the sense that quantum physics is a theory--precise, predictive, not riddled with exception and ceteris paribus clauses. He thinks that psychology is "philosophy," a sort of normative and interpretative attempt to make sense of human behavior by rationalizing action, but not a science. Maybe C thinks the same thing. (I criticized Davidson in my diss and have a paper on the subject that I think is quite good, but I never been able to place anywhere.)
However, Chomsky has a theory in a broad sense--not the quantum mechanics sense--it is, although he doesn't recognize it as such, vulgar Marxism. The power of Chomsky's critiques of the media and US foreign policy show just how string a theory vulgar Marxism is. It probably explans about 85% of the explicable variance.
jks
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