paleontologists

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Guy and FUNKNET,
  My guess is that Guy's paleontologist colleague might find the
functionalist-generativist contrast interesting because of the centrality
of a parallel contrast inside paleontology and systematic biology more
generally.  I believe the opposition there is between "cladists" and
"non-cladists".  I think that the cladists emphasize autonomy of species
classifications and the non-cladists focus on statistical properties and
the functional bases of speciation.
  If your colleague manages to learn about the functionalist-generativist
contrast, I would love to hear how he/she thinks it parallels or fails to
parallel the contrast in linguistics.
  By the way, I agree with Dick Hudson about the misleading nature of
binary contrasts.  They are typically social groupings whose existence is
grounded on primate urges toward group formation, rather than intellectual
phenomena.  Dick might have read the classic article by Allan Newell titled
"You can't play 20 questions with nature".  Newell argues that attempts to
divide the world by opposition between scientific yin and yang are
scientifically misguided.  But they are real facts of the sociology of
science and worth understanding on that level.

--Brian MacWhinney