The purpose of this paper is to critically examine Chomsky's argument that his linguistics, which he sees as the best window on what he calls `Plato's Problem', is a matter of `science', his politics a matter of `personal hopes and aspirations', and his analysis of mechanism of indoctrination, which according to him constitute what he calls Orwell's Problem, a matter of `trivial scientific analysis'. We argue that the dichotomy between Plato's Problem and Orwell's Problem on the one hand and between Plato's Problem and politics on the other is not as clear-cut as he thinks it is, essentially because Orwell's Problem is not trivial and because he himself provides evidence that shows that Orwell's Problem can and must be dealt with the same way he handles Plato's Problem. We take issue with his claim that "in the realm of social thought we don't really have good evidence for anything" (Chomsky 1988: 108) and with his somewhat uncritical acceptance of the folklore about modern science, an acceptance that leads him not to believe not only that his linguistics can do for biology what 19th century chemistry did for physics, but also that modern science is the result of a happy convergence of our science-forming capacity and truth. We sketch out some of the things critical social thought provides good evidence for, including what Chomsky himself calls the instinct for freedom, and provide evidence for the fact that the 17th century abridgment of Reason he calls science involves the entrenchment of knowledge as power (cf. Pyenson 1982, Lewontin 1989 and Arbib and Hesse 1986, amongst others), and attempt to show that current consensus in biology makes his claims appear to be mere aspirations. We conclude that whilst he overestimates the contribution his linguistics makes or can make, he understimates the contribution his revealing discussions of Orwell's problem can make towards an understanding of `the laws of our nature'.