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I think it is the other way around. Chomsky is trying to find the underlying structure of intelligence (just like gravity underlies planetary motion), and is saying that others are simply trying to generate a model of intelligence (through statistical methods) with no understanding of why the intelligence behaves that way. Gravity is the why, planetary motion is the model produced by data (acquired by Brahe).

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What will prevent Chomsky from having an Earth-centric model of the solar system, with epicycles to explain all of those weird little ticks like dropped pronouns?

The only thing that could possibly break you out of that way of thinking is massive amounts of observational analysis to show you that your foundation is flawed.

Seeing the moons of Jupiter revolutionized physics. Chomsky says that observing the heavens is unnecessary, and a distraction from his studying of the motion of billiards balls.

He's got trigonometry down cold, but he'll never come up with calculus that way. And quantum mechanics would never fall into Chomsky's way of thinking, in my analogy.

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