Taking a broader view: Abstraction and idealization.

The author comments on the paper "Abstractions and Idealisations: The Construction of Modern Linguistics," by Martin Stokhof and Michiel van Lambalgen. It discusses the way modern linguistics constructs its proper objects, the scientific criteria for characterizing its success or failure and the role of naturalism. He argues that a broader view of modern linguistics calls for a reconsideration of the role of abstraction and idealization. Some aspects deemed essential for constituting the generativist approach including innateness hypothesis, explicit inaccessible rule view and distinction between competence and performance are proposed. He opposes the suggestion that physics make exclusive use of abstraction and that abstraction is the only useful research tool within a naturalist setting.