[rooundio]

tl;dr "Classical" (natural) scientist: "X is only understood once I found first principles that x can be reduced to." "Modern" scientist: "X might be so complicated that there are no first principles that x can be reduced to. Rather, finding a neural network that can do x is the best I can do, and it explains why x can be done."

[foldr]

I think you should delete the "first" in both cases. Chomsky merely wants a principled model. He's not making any pretense that we're anywhere close to understanding language at a fundamental level. Norvig isn't really interested in principled models at all.

[mcguire]

See also

* Statistical mechanics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics