Stephen Toulmin 1922 – 2009
Stephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher of science, ethics, and argumentation. Trained at Cambridge under Wittgenstein, he held posts in Britain, Australia, and the United States, eventually settling at the University of Southern California. His Uses of Argument set out a now-classic anatomy of practical reasoning centered on claims, grounds, warrants, and rebuttals, while Cosmopolis offered a critical reassessment of the seventeenth-century rise of formal rationalism. Human Understanding, Return to Reason, and the jointly authored Abuse of Casuistry argued for a situated, evolutionary conception of rationality.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Stephen Toulmin:
“An argument is an organized presentation of grounds for a claim.”
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Attributed to Stephen Toulmin:
“Practical reasoning rarely fits the pattern of formal proof.”
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Attributed to Stephen Toulmin:
“Cosmopolis is the ambition to govern thought by universal abstract reason; it is also a temptation.”
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Attributed to Stephen Toulmin:
“Rationality is grounded in practical contexts, not in disembodied logic.”
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Attributed to Stephen Toulmin:
“Modernity must learn humility from its own oversights.”