St. Toulmin. Toulmin
TOULMIN
TOULMIN
(Toulmin) Stephen Edelston ( . 25.3.1922) , Amer. philosopher, representative of the anti-positivist movement in Anglo-America. philosophy of science. IN beginning 50's gg. T. criticized basic provisions of neopositivism. IN beginning 60s gg. T. formulates a view of epistemology as a theory of history. formation and functioning of “standards of rationality and understanding that underlie scientific theories." According to T., a scientist considers understandable those events or phenomena that correspond to the standards he accepts. What does not fit into the “matrix of understanding” is considered an anomaly, the elimination of which (i.e. improved understanding) acts as the evolution of science. Rationality scientific knowledge, according to T., is compliance with accepted standards of understanding. Standards of rationality change with change scientific theories - a continuous process of selecting conceptual innovations. The content of theories is considered by T. not as logical. statements, but as a unique population of concepts. According to T., basic features of the evolution of science are similar to Darwin's biological scheme. evolution. Contents of conceptual populations (analogue of biological species) subject to change, which entails methods and goals scientific activities; the emergence of conceptual innovations is balanced by the process of criticality. selection (analogous to biological mutation and selection); this duality. leads to a noticeable change only at a certain conditions (analogous to the survival or extinction of species in the struggle for); those conceptual options that are better adapted to the requirements of the intellectual environment are retained.
The mechanism of evolution of conceptual populations, according to T., consists of their interaction with the totality of intrascientific ones. (intellectual) and extrascientific (social, psychological, economic and etc.) factors. The decisive factor for the survival of certain concepts is the significance of their contribution to improving understanding.
The evolution of theories depends on historically changing standards and strategies of rationality, which in turn are subject to feedback from evolving disciplines. In this sense, internal (rationally reconstructible) and external (depending on extra-scientific factors) histories of science are complementary sides of the same process of adaptation scientific concepts to the requirements of “their habitat”.
T. O., T. denies the objective purposefulness of the development of science, actually eliminates truths from epistemology, replacing it with pragmatist and instrumentalist analogues. T.'s speech against the absolutization of formal logic as a criterion of rationality and the demand for a specific historical. approach to analyzing the development of science using data from sociology, economics, social psychology and politics, fair in themselves, on an eclectic basis. philosophy (combining realism, analytical philosophy and neo-Kantianism) turn into serious concessions to relativism and irrationalism. This is especially obvious in T.’s works on ethics and philosophy of religion, which affirm the validity of moral and religious judgments from the totality of rules and schemes of understanding and explanation accepted in these areas.
The philosophy of science, L., 1953; An examination of the place of reason in ethics, L.-N. Y., 1958; The ancestry of science, v. 1-3, L., 1961-65; Foresight and understanding, Bloomington, 1961; Metaphysical beliefs, L., 1970s (joint with R. Hepburn, A. Maclntyre); Human understanding, v. 1, Princeton, 1972; Wittgenstein's Vienna, N.Y., 1973 (joint with A. Ja-nik); Knowing and acting, N.Y.-L., 1976; V rus. trans. - Conceptual revolutions in science, in book: Structure and development of science, M., 1978, With. 170-89.
Hill T.I., Sovrem. theories of knowledge, lane With English, M., 1965; Porus V.N., Chertkova E.L., Concept of the evolution of science S.T., “FN”, 1978, No. 5, With. 130-39; Co-hen L., Is the progress of science evolutionary?, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1973, v. 24, Mi 1, p. 41-46; M o t u s k a A., Relatywistyczna wizja nauki. Analiza krytyczna koncepcii T. S. Kuhna i S. E. Toulmina, Wroclaw, 1980.
Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. Ch. editor: L. F. Ilyichev, P. N. Fedoseev, S. M. Kovalev, V. G. Panov. 1983 .
TOULMIN
(Toulmin)
Works: An examination of the place of reason in ethics. Cambr., 1950; The philosophy of science: an introduction. L., 1953; The uses of argument. Cambr., 1958; The ancestry of science (v. 1-3, with J. Goodfield); Wittgenstein's Vienna (with A. Janik). L., 1973; Knowing and acting. L., 1976; The return to cosmology. Berkley, 1982; The abuse of casuistry (with A. Jonsen). Berkley, 1988; Cosmopolis , N.-Y, 1989; in Russian translation: Conceptual revolutions in science. - In the book: Structure and development of science. M., 1983; Withstands criticism of normal and revolutionary science. book: Philosophy of Science, issue 5. M., 1999, pp. 246-258; History, and the “third world”. - Ibid., pp. 258-280; No. 10. Lit.: Andrianova T.V., RakitovA. I. Philosophy of science by S. Tulmin. - In the book: Criticism of modern non-Marxist concepts of the philosophy of science. M., 1987, p. 109-134; PorusV. N. The price of “flexible” rationality (On the philosophy of science by S. Tulmin). - In the book: Philosophy of science, vol. 5. M„ 1999, p. 228-246. V. N. Poru s New Philosophical Encyclopedia: In 4 vols. M.: Thought.
Edited by V. S. Stepin.
2001
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Toulmin, Stephen Edelston Stephen Edelston Toulmin (1922 1997) (eng. Stephen Edelston Toulmin) British philosopher, author of scientific works and professor. Influenced by the ideas of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin dedicated his works... ... Wikipedia
- (Toulmin) Stephen Edelston (b. 1922) American philosopher of the post-positivist school. Early works (“Philosophy of Science”, 1953, etc.) contain criticism of the neopositivist concept of science. Subsequently (“Great Vienna”, 1973, co-authored with A.... ... The latest philosophical dictionary
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TOULMIN STEVEN- (1922 1997) - English philosopher and teacher, specialist in the field of ideas, creator of the evolutionist concept of science. He studied physics at the University of Cambridge and received his doctorate in 1948 for his dissertation “An Inquiry into the Place of the Mind in... ...
TOULMIN STEPHEN EDELSTON- (b. 1922) – American philosopher, representative of the post-positivist movement in the Anglo-American philosophy of science. The disciplinary model of the evolution of science that he developed is also applicable to describe the historical development of technology, where... Philosophy of Science and Technology: Thematic Dictionary
TOULMIN Stephen Edelston- (b. 1922) English philosopher. His family in the years before and after the First World War was associated with the politics of the English Liberal Party and with the activities of the Nobel laureate Norman Angell, whose well-known book The Great Illusion gave... ... Modern Western philosophy. Encyclopedic Dictionary
Stephen Edelston Toulmin(English Stephen Edelston Toulmin; March 25, 1922, London - December 4, 2009, California) - British philosopher, author of scientific works and professor. Influenced by the ideas of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his work to the analysis of moral reason. In his research he studied the problem of practical argumentation. In addition, his work has been used in the field of rhetoric to analyze rhetorical argumentation. Toulmin's Model of Argumentation, a series of six interrelated components used to analyze argumentation, is considered one of his most significant works, especially in the fields of rhetoric and communication.
Biography
Stephen Toulmin was born in London, England, on March 25, 1922, to Jeffrey Adelson Toulmin and Doris Holman Toulmin. In 1942 he received a BA from King's College, Cambridge University. Toulmin was soon hired as a junior research fellow at the Ministry of Aviation Industry, first at the Radar Research and Development Station in Malvern, and later transferred to the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Germany. At the end of World War II, he returned to England and received a Master of Arts degree in 1947, and then a Doctor of Philosophy degree. At Cambridge, Toulmin met the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose research on the relationship between the use and meaning of language greatly influenced Toulmin's views. Toulmin's doctoral dissertation, Reason in Ethics, traces Wittgenstein's ideas regarding the analysis of ethical arguments (1948).
After graduating from Cambridge, from 1949 to 1954 Toulmin taught Philosophy of History at Oxford University. It was during this period that he wrote his first book: “Philosophy of Science” (1953). From 1954 to 1955, Toulmin worked as a visiting professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne in Australia. After which he returned to England to head the Department of Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He held this position from 1955 to 1959. While working in Leeds, he published one of his most significant books in the field of rhetoric: Ways of Using Argumentation (1958). In his book he explores the directions of traditional logic. Despite the fact that the book was poorly received in England, and Toulmin’s colleagues in Leeds even laughingly called it Toulmin’s “illogical book,” in the USA professors were Toulmin’s colleagues at Columbia, Stanford and New York universities, where he lectured in 1959 as a visiting professor, the book was approved. While Toulmin was teaching in the United States, Wayne Brockread and Douglas Ehninger presented his work to communication students because they believed that his work best presented a structural model important for the analysis and criticism of rhetorical arguments. In 1960, Toulmin returned to London to take up the post of Head of the School of the History of Ideas, Nuffield Foundation.
In 1965, Toulmin returned to the United States, where he worked until the end of his life, teaching and researching at various universities in the country. In 1967, Toulmin organized the posthumous publication of several editions of his close friend N.R. Hanson. While working at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Toulmin published his work Human Understanding in 1972, in which he explores the causes and processes of change associated with the development of science. In this book, he uses an unprecedented comparison between the process of scientific development and Darwin's model of evolutionary development to show that the process of scientific development is evolutionary in nature. In 1973, while a professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he co-authored with historian Alan Janick the book Wittgenstein's Vienna (1973). It emphasizes the importance of history in human beliefs. In contrast to philosophers - supporters of absolute truth, which Plato defended in his idealistic formal logic, Toulmin argues that truth can be relative, depending on the historical or cultural context. From 1975 to 1978, Toulmin served on the National Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Biomedical and Behavioral Research Subjects, founded by the US Congress. During this period, he co-authored with Albert Johnsen the book “The Abuse of Causality” (1988), which describes ways to resolve moral issues.
Within the framework of the socio-psychological direction of reconstructing the process of development of scientific knowledge lies the concept of the American philosopher Stephen Toulmin (1922-1997).
From Toulmin’s point of view, Kuhn’s model is in an insoluble conflict with the empirical history of science, denying the continuity of its development, since this history does not have periods of “absolute misunderstanding.”
To explain continuity in the description of science, Toulmin proposes to use an evolutionary scheme similar to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.
The development of science, Toulmin believes, is characterized not by radical revolutions, but by micro-revolutions, which are associated with each individual discovery and are analogous to individual variability or mutations.
The development of science is carried out as the deployment of a network of problems! determined situationally and disappearing with a change in the situation or as a result of a change in goals and generations. Concepts, theories and explanatory procedures are assessed not as true or false, but in terms of adaptation to the environment, to the intellectual field of problems.
Knowledge, according to Toulmin, “multiplies” as a flow of problems and concepts, the most valuable of which are transferred from era to era, from one scientific community to another, maintaining continuity in development. At the same time, they undergo a certain transformation, “hybridization,” etc. Toulmin does not connect the revaluation and change of rationality with any deep crisis, because a crisis is a painful phenomenon. He rather views them as situations of choice and preference in conditions of constant and minor mutations of concepts. In this case, we are not talking about progress in the development of science, but only about its greater or lesser adaptation to changing conditions.
Thus, Toulmin essentially interprets the scientific process as a constant and undirected process of ideas struggling for existence through the best adaptation to their environment.
Scientific theories and traditions, according to Toulmin, are subject to processes of conservative preservation (survival) and innovation (“mutations”). Innovations in science (“mutations”) are constrained by factors of criticism and self-criticism (“natural” and “artificial” selection). Those populations that adapt to the “intellectual environment” to the greatest extent survive. The most important changes involve changes in the fundamental theoretical standards, or “matrices” of understanding, that underlie scientific theories137.
Scientists, the scientific elite, are a kind of farmers, “breeding” concepts and problems and choosing (in accordance with their standards) the most rational samples. The choice and preference of certain concepts and concepts is determined not by their truth, but by their effectiveness in solving problems and evaluation by the scientific elite, which forms, as it were, a “council of experts” of a given scientific society. It is they who determine the measure of their adequacy and application. Scientists, like farmers, try not to waste energy on inefficient operations and, like farmers, are careful in developing those problems that require urgent solutions, Toulmin writes in Human Understanding.
The fundamental concept of methodology, according to Toulmin, is the concept of evolving rationality. It is identical to the standards of justification and understanding. The scientist considers “understandable” those events, etc., that justify his preliminary expectation. The expectations themselves are guided by the historical image of rationality, the “ideals of the natural order.” What does not fit into the “matrix of understanding” is considered “abnormal”. Elimination of “anomalies” is the most important stimulus for scientific evolution. An explanation is assessed not in terms of truth, but according to the following criteria: predictive reliability, coherence, coherence, convenience. These criteria are historically changeable and determined by the activities of the scientific elite. They are formed under the influence of intrascientific and extrascientific (social, economic, ideological) factors that complement each other. But still, Toulmin assigns a decisive role to intrascientific (rational) factors.
The history of science appears in Toulmin as a process of implementation and alternation of standards of rational explanation unfolded over time, taken together with procedures for testing and testing them for practical effectiveness, and science is “as a developing body of ideas and methods” that “constantly evolve in a changing social environment” . In contrast to Popper's bioevolutionary position or Kuhn's biosocial position, Toulmin's position can be characterized as a “selectionist” model of science.
Undoubtedly, Toulmin manages to notice important dialectical features of the development of science, in particular, the fact that the evolution of scientific theories is influenced by historically changing “standards” and “strategies” of rationality, which in turn are subject to the opposite influence from evolving disciplines. An important element of his concept is the use of data from sociology, social psychology, economics, and the history of science, and the affirmation of a concrete historical approach to the development of science.
At the same time, he absolutizes biological analogy as a scheme for describing scientific processes and relativizes the image of science, which breaks down into the history of survival and extinction of conceptual populations adapting to certain historical data (“ecological requirements”). In addition, neither T. Kuhn nor St. Toulmin does not explore the question of the “mechanisms” of the formation of a scientist and the emergence of new knowledge. Noting the complex nature of this problem, they focused their attention mainly on the problem of choosing between already formed theories.
American analytical philosopher, was significantly influenced by the philosophy of L. Wittgenstein.
He graduated from King's College, Cambridge (1951), taught philosophy at Oxford, professor at the University of Leeds (1955-59), then moved to the USA, where from 1965 he taught philosophy at various universities (Michigan, California, Chicago, Northwestern (Illinois) and etc., as well as at universities in Australia and Israel. In the 1950s, he criticized the neopositivist program for the substantiation of scientific knowledge, proposing a historical approach to scientific research processes. In the 1960s, he formulated the concept of the historical formation and functioning of “standards of rationality.” and understanding” that underlie scientific theories. Understanding in science, according to Toulmin, is usually determined by the compliance of its statements with the standards accepted in the scientific community, “matrices.” What does not fit into the “matrix” is considered an anomaly, the elimination of which ( “improving understanding”) acts as a stimulus for the evolution of science. The rationality of scientific knowledge is determined by its compliance with the standards of understanding. The latter change during the evolution of scientific theories, which he interprets as a continuous selection of conceptual innovations. The theories themselves are considered not as logical systems of statements, but as a special kind of “population” of concepts. This biological analogy plays a significant role in evolutionary epistemology in general and in Toulmin in particular. He portrays the development of science as similar to biological evolution. Scientific theories and traditions are subject to conservation (survival) and innovation (mutation). “Mutations” are restrained by criticism and self-criticism (“natural” and “artificial” selection), therefore noticeable changes occur only under certain conditions, when the intellectual environment allows the “survival” of those populations that adapt to it to the greatest extent. The most important changes are related to the replacement of the matrices of understanding themselves, the fundamental theoretical standards. Science is both a set of intellectual disciplines and a professional institution. The mechanism of evolution of “conceptual populations” consists of their interaction with intrascientific (intellectual) and extrascientific (social, economic, etc.) factors. Concepts can “survive” due to the significance of their contribution to improving understanding, but this can also occur under the influence of other influences, for example. ideological support or economic priorities, the socio-political role of leaders of scientific schools or their authority in the scientific community. The internal (rationally reconstructed) and external (depending on extra-scientific factors) history of science are complementary sides of the same evolutionary process. Toulmin still emphasizes the decisive role of rational factors. The “carriers” of scientific rationality are representatives of the “scientific elite”, on whom the success of “artificial” selection and the “breeding” of new, productive conceptual “populations” mainly depends. He implemented his program in a number of historical and scientific studies, the content of which, however, revealed the limitations of the evolutionary model of the development of knowledge. In his epistemological analyzes he tried to do without the objectivist interpretation of truth, leaning toward an instrumentalist and pragmatist interpretation of it. He opposed dogmatism in epistemology, against the unjustified universalization of certain criteria of rationality, and demanded a specific historical approach to the processes of development of science, associated with the use of data from sociology, social psychology, history of science and other disciplines. In his works on ethics and philosophy of religion, Toulmin argued that the validity of moral and religious judgments depends on the rules and schemes of understanding and explanation accepted in these areas, formulated or practiced in language and serving to harmonize social behavior. However, these rules and schemes do not have universal validity, but operate in specific situations of ethical behavior. Therefore, the analysis of the languages of ethics and religion is primarily aimed not at identifying certain universal characteristics, but rather at their uniqueness. In his later works, he came to the conclusion that it was necessary to revise traditional “humanistic” ideas about rationality, dating back to the Enlightenment: human rationality is determined by the context of social and political goals, which science also serves.
Works: An examination of the place of reason in ethics. Cambr., 1950; The philosophy of science: an introduction. L., 1953; The uses of argument. Cambr., 1958; The ancestry of science (v. 1-3, with J. Goodfield); Wittgenstein's Vienna (with A. Janik). L., 1973; Knowing and acting. L., 1976; The return to cosmology. Berkley, 1982; The abuse of casuistry (with A. Jonsen). Berkley, 1988; Cosmopolis , N.-Y, 1989; in Russian translation: Conceptual revolutions in science. - In the book: Structure and development of science. M., 1983; Does the distinction between normal and revolutionary science stand up to criticism? .- In the book: Philosophy of Science, issue 5. M., 1999, pp. 246-258; History, practice and the “third world”. - Ibid., pp. 258-280; ”, 1981, No. 10.
Lit.: Andrianova T.V., RakitovA. I. Philosophy of science by S. Tulmin. - In the book: Criticism of modern non-Marxist concepts of the philosophy of science. M., 1987, p. 109-134; PorusV. N. The price of “flexible” rationality (On the philosophy of science by S. Tulmin). - In the book: Philosophy of science, vol. 5. M„ 1999, p. 228-246.
