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From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: IS LINGUISTICS A SCIENCE
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References: <3cls2t$ai@pipe3.pipeline.com> <3cq1vh$2fp@newsbf01.news.aol.com> <PALKOVIC.94Dec20120543@x4u2.desy.de>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 21:04:33 GMT
Lines: 31

palkovic@desy.de (John Palkovic) writes:

>>>>>> "Perotean" <perotean@aol.com> writes:

>>On the list of nonsciences pretending to true science, linguistics is
>>last on the list; physicists and biologists poke the most fun at it;
>>even more than at philosophy.

>Speaking as a physicist, I wanted to say that I enjoy poking fun at
>philosophy much more than linguistics. In fact, I don't poke fun at
>linguistics at all. The ranking of word frequencies and the recent


I'm not a physicist but I have studied engineering and CS, and I don't
poke fun at linguistics either.  But there are subfields in linguistics
which do seem to need some poking :-).. Jumping to conclusions and 
creating fantastic theories based on little evidence, and ignoring data
are some of the problems.. It reminds me of the joke about some people
wondering about prime numbers. 

The physicist's reasoning goes like this:

--Let's see. One is prime, three is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime..
Hmmmm, Odd numbers seem to be prime. Ooops, 9 is not prime. Well, let's
check a few more, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... That's it, all odd numbers
are prime.... and 9 is a data error.

--
						-- Mark---
....we must realize that the infinite in the sense of an infinite totality, 
where we still find it used in deductive methods, is an illusion. Hilbert,1925
