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@ Noam Chomsky fundamentally altered the way we understand language. Chomsky, a scholar and later a political activist, transformed the previously esoteric field of theoretical linguistics into a way of understanding human nature itself # Before Chomsky's revolution, scientists like B. F. Skinner argued that language is learned by reacting to the environment within which we live. For Skinner and others, the mind is a blank slate, waiting to be drawn on by experience # Skinner's view was dramatically challenged in 1957 by Chomsky. He argued that the speed and accuracy with which children master their mother tongue, and the grammatical similarities between all the world's languages, shows that the ability to learn language is genetically determined, like seeing and hearing # Although Chomsky was primarily a linguist, his theories of language opened up different ways of analyzing human behavior. If language is biologically determined, then other areas of human activity that depend on language and thought - such as the arts and sciences - may be too # By the Seventies, Chomsky's theories were under attack. To his critics, his theory of language was both misleading and overly simplistic # In the Sixties and Seventies, America was bitterly divided over its participation in the Vietnam War. Chomsky gained another sort of fame when he publicly criticized the war and sided with draft dodgers and other opponents of American intervention # Chomsky's political beliefs stemmed from his theory of language. He thought that behaviourists like Skinner were suggesting that humans were malleable: to Chomsky it was therefore necessary to fight governments, media tycoons and others who sought to control the way we thought and acted # Despite the political controversy that embroiled Chomsky in his latter years, his intellectual appeal remained as great as ever. His lectures continued to attract thousands of people the world over @ 
