In The Gay Science, Nietzsche asserted that because of three errors, science has been promoted for the
wrong ends. The first error concerns the conviction that through science one aspired to grasp God’s wisdom;
this he imputed to the English. The second error, which he generously bestowed the French, relates to the
belief in the absolute usefulness of knowledge. The third and last error was the conviction that ‘in science,
one had and loved something selfless, harmless, self-sufficient and truly innocent in which the evil drives of
humanity had no part at all’ (2001: 55); this he specially reserved for Spinoza. My argument is that Alan
Waters’ article suffers from exactly the same inadequacies that, as Nietzsche, in his customary biting style,
maintained, characterize the practice of science. The ‘three errors’ that the article comprises are (i) psycholo-
gization of stereotyping, (ii) dehistoricization and depoliticization of native-speakerism and (iii) an uncritical
adherence to ‘mainstream’ positivistic epistemologies. Indeed, the ‘shibboleth of positivistic value-neutrality’
and cognitivism have funnelled Waters into the naturalization and ideological neutralization of stereotypes
and native-speakerism wherein ‘the evil drives of humanity had no part at all’. To put my argument into a
wider perspective, I argue that the position advanced by Waters is symptomatic of the kind of applied linguis-
tics he practices.
