Scientism and Sentence-Combining

Abstract

tion in its own right. Many of us have sought to define it as an academic discipline not only by its special area of study, but also by means of its specific methodology. Our area of study may be located between that of the psychology of learning and that of traditional literature. Our methodology is distinguished, on the one hand, from that of cognitive science by an emphasis on pedagogical application; on the other hand, crucially, it is distinguished from most literary studies by an interest in an empiricism modeled on that of the social sciences. We have followed the usual procedure of an emerging specialist community in making these distinctions. The practice of the natural sciences, especially that of mathematical physics, is exemplary for all disciplines which have as their goal the achievement of objective knowledge. The great prestige of the natural sciences and, to a lesser extent, that of the older social sciences has repeatedly influenced scholars in the humanities to pattern their research on scientific models. We have seen this, for instance, in linguistics and history. History is now virtually two disciplines, one humanistic, the other social scientific. Linguistics is emerging from a long period of consideration of exactly what is necessary for the founding of a science of language. It is developing as a model for a discipline that has, in large part, crossed the line from the humanities to the social sciences. The reasons for these changes are not confined to the requirements of the search for pure knowledge, but often