Wrongness of Chomsky’s (and Pinker’s) arguments for Linguistic nativism. See: http://www.grsampson.net/REmpNat.html

Interesting example of how popular science can be very misleading. Pinker (and Chomsky) write very well (and have big impressive sounding titles) yet are purveying a viewpoint that is controversial (or worse: already discredited) in proper scientific circles.

If men have not enough it is from want of provident care, and foresight, and industry and frugality. No man in this land suffers from poverty unless it be more than his fault – unless it be his sin Henry Ward Beecher

The belief that success reveals virtue (and the converse) is a prominent intellectual [...]

This is definitely up there for the greatest myth of all time award. Strong overtones of intellectual quackery and really begs the question of why did so many fall for this? Readings:

The belief that the present is a particular nadir in human affairs be it culturally, politically or ethically is a frequent one throughout history. However its very recurrence indicates its falsity, something I couldn’t imagine better put than this quote from Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646; 6th ed., 1672) Chapter xi (cited [...]

E.g. The student movements of Europe and America …. were critical in bringing the war in Vietnam to an end …. , Perry Anderson writing in the London Review of Books, left column, p. 7, 2002-10-03.

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p> At the start of Foucault’s book The Order of Things the classification system of a Chinese encyclopedia is presented. It commences a) belonging to the Emperor, b) embalmed, c) tame, d) sucking pigs, e) sirens, f) fabulous, g) stray dogs, h) included in the present classification, i) frenzied, j) innumerable, k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, l) et cetera, m) having just broken the water pitcher, n) that from a long way off look like flies.

But in fact, as Foucault acknowledges, there is no such encyclopedia, rather it the brilliant fiction of Borges in a short story entitled The Analytical Language of John Wilkins. Nevertheless the idea has entered our culture, and is often presented as fact rather than fantasy – being adduced as evidence that no classification system, and no viewpoint on the world, is special and any more correct than any other.

TODO: cite Bryson as example of its ubiquity and Dennett for refutation (or just google ….?).

TODO: write up original David article (1985 AER I think) and then reference the Liebowitz and Margolis article from JLE (1992?).

What is the myth? The myth quite simply is that the there was an American Dream that could be realised or was more likely to be realized than in other countries (especially the ‘old’ home countries of Northern Europe). Formally this could be rendered as:

The USA allowed for (significantly) greater social mobility than in other countries (particularly those in Western Europe from which many of the early immigrants came). This mobility might be only in any a specific area, for example referring only to the extreme case of progress from rags to riches, or it might be the more common situation of poor immigrant to self-respecting independent yeoman farmer.