Stephen Toulmin

Stephen Edelston Toulmin (25 March 1922 – 4 December 2009) was a British philosopher, author, and educator.

Quotes

  • At the heart of the Stoic doctrine lay a conviction which was...highly favorable to the development of a systematic natural science. For, first and foremost, the Stoics believed in 'determinism'; there was nothing willful about Nature, and everything happened according to law. The secret of human life was to fathom the general character of this universal order and to live in harmony with it. This conviction led certain of the Stoics to elaborate the scientific ideas inherited from their predecessors, but at the same time it reinforced them in beliefs which, to our eyes, appear superstitious. (Their belief in astrological divination...was justified by appealing to the harmony and interaction between celestial and terrestrial events.)
    • The Architecture of Matter (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) ch. 5 — written with June Goodfield
  • Different media of publication—textbooks, monographs, quarterlies, abstracts, and ‘review letters’—have been introduced, one after another, to meet new professional needs; and the historically changing operations of a scientific profession are reflected once more in the transfer of influence from one medium to another. The ‘invisible colleges’ of seventeenth-century Europe were initially linked by the circulated correspondence of men like Henry Oldenburg. With the foundation of national academies, emphasis shifted to their Transactions and to treatises such as Newton’s Principia, which were published under their auspices. In subsequent centuries, the balance has again shifted several times: to quarterlies, to twice-monthly periodicals, weeklies, and even shorter-term publications. The proliferation of journals and the acceleration of publication are effects, in part of the fragmentation of sub-disciplines, in part of the sharpened competition for priority; but they are associated also with a great decentralization of scientific authority. Where no one can hope to master all the available concepts and theories, scientific professions were bound to move towards a pluralistic pattern of authority. On the very frontiers of research, indeed, we are now back not only with ‘invisible colleges’ but with a multiplicity of Oldenburgs, who circulate duplicated ‘prepublication’ material in highly specialized subjects to an international circle of equally specialized devotees. In the more self-consciously original branches of science—it has even been suggested—only out-of-date ideas ever actually get into print!
    • Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (Princeton UP, 1972) p. 275
  • In Pascal's view, casuistry was the denial of true morality. It held out no vision of the ideals to which humans should aspire. It commanded no sacrifice, insisted on no heroic dedication. Not only did it trivialize the lofty precepts of the Gospel, it did not even hint at the "natural life of virtue" that had been espoused by Aristotle and Cicero. It was a mere farrago of excuses, loopholes, and evasions.
    • The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (U of California P, 1988) p. 241 — written with Albert R. Jonsen
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