Comment by NaiveEmpiricist

Actually, there have been a number of rounds of paradigm shift (or attempted paradigm shift) in linguistics over the past 70 years. The unique thing about linguistics is that they've been compressed into the lifetime of the same central figure.

Also, I'll mention that there is a lot of empirical knowledge about natural language syntax in generative grammar, even if the details aren't quite right about their theoretical underpinnings. And a lot of them were "low-hanging fruit" waiting for someone to point out how to find them and characterize them. That Chomsky did that is the best argument for his intellectual value - permitting all that "normal science" to happen.

Science doesn't guarantee technological applications, whether or not that science is correct.

Finally, just saying: use of a word like "Chomskyism" makes you sound like one of those creationists who call evolution "Darwinism".