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Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity

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Toulmin does an above average job of informing the postmodern thinker regarding the historical rootage of many of his or her cherished beliefs. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and even sent off quotes to a friend who is doing a cross-disciplinary dissertation. Although it deals with "scientific" issues, Toulmin actually does a great job showing us how we came to think in some of the very general ways that way we do.

As an adjunct professor trained in the Humanities, I can only wish I had read this 10 years ago when it came out! For anybody who ever desired to understand why and how 'postmodernism' is a reaction to the 1950's, this book is must reading. His basic thesis is simple and elegant; though a philosopher like Descartes may postulate timeless truth, the fact of the matter is that those 'timeless' truths are rooted in a specific historical situation and its limited sociology of knowledge. (In this case, the Thirty Years War which ravaged Europe from 1618-1648.) Western philosophy and science has been traditionally associated with the Quest for Certainty that initiated with Descartes. However, Toulmin shows how that was not necessarily the only viable means to achieve certifiable knowledge/science. Descartes was a child of the early 17th Century and the radical uncertainty that ravaged all of Europe during the Thirty Years War. The pricetag of achieving some manner of certainty to overcome the social chaos of that time was that the European academic community turned its back on the more eclectic, inductive, and humane tradition of the Renaissance thinkers like Montagne and Erasmus. This, as Toulmin shows, was not only tragic, but very limiting to all of Western Philosophy/Science/Culture for about 300 years.

In a moment of rare insight, Toulmin then shows how this developed and eventually had parallels in our own century with the dogmatism that grew out of the aftermath of the First World War in the 1930s and the advent of Logical Positivism, and then again, in the stultifying conservatism of the 1950s which reacted in similar fashion to the chaos resulting from the Second World War. In a word, Toulmin shows us just how far the the academic/social community will sacrifice truth and knowledge for certainty when social climates dictate it. Understanding this dynamic allows us to realize that times of crisis need not be resolved by a Quest for Certainty which operates on principles of timeless truths or single domain methods. As Toulmin constantly advises us, there are no timeless methods which do not have an oppressive underbelly.

Having been trained in rhetoric, psychology, literature, and religion, I found his book most enlightening. It should be in the libraries of all scientists, therapists, professors, pastors, theologians, and anybody else who is interested in how to proceed in this age of pluralism and its cornocopia of postmodern 'methods'.

Wow! Toulmin takes the reader on an exhaustive tour of the modernist program, tracing the roots of modern thought way, way back to the 16th century...and before. He makes a compelling case, with some interesting side trips, that modern thought grew out of the religious wars of the early 1600s and the desire for non-sectarian certainty that those wars created. If that doesn't make sense, you should read this book. Fascinating history, and a broad sweep of science and philosophy make this book quite readable, though neither short nor easy. Still, it goes a long way toward explaining why the ground seemed to shift under our feet around 1960. It was an earthquake that was as inevitable as it was overdue. I highly recommend this book to any serious student of culture.

It has been said that to understand one's present, study the past. And this is exactly the strategy used by Toulmin in trying to make sense of our postmodern present. By studying the trajectory of modernity from it's inception in the Renaissance to the mid-1979s, Toulmin has succeded in demonstrating the "decline and fall" of modernity's worldview.

The most important chapter of the book, for me personally, was the final chapter which argues for the need to adopt what he calls "skeptical rationality" rather than the foundational rationality of modernity.

All in all an important study of modernity which should be read by any one who is interested in the zeitgeist of the present.

and How it Ended up Creating the World as We Know It_ could have been another title of this superb book that is written with cogency, urgency, and a real desire to get across the reader what the author has to say. The synopsis of the story is as another reveiwer has already described below: namely that the kick-off of modernity with Descartes' "I think therefore I am" was not something that popped out of the blue of his profound brain but a working hypothesis in search of a foundation of certainty---to be applied to theology promarily so as to end the sort of savagery that was devastating Europe in the name of religion during his lifetime (the 30 Years War).

Toulmin contextualizes Newton's discovery and Hobbes' political philosophy (briefly but enough to make the connection) in the light of this quest for certainty that held so many of the best minds in Europe spellbound for all these years. With a pace that won't let up, Toulmin takes you on a tour of Europe's social and intellectual transformation: going from poverty and social schism and a sense of doom in 1610 to a confident, unquestionable, and unquestioned, established cosmopolitical paradigm of order that was foisted onto social and political (thus also art) agendas.

So far so good but it sounds like something you've heard before doesn''t it? That's when this book takes off:
Toulmin digs at the 'subtexts' of these common-knowledge events to show you some very interesting presuppositions (seemingly innocuous at first) inherent in these great scientific discoveries that could not but lead to the institutionalization of racism, sexism, and nationalisms that had such traumatic consequences in the 20th century, with continuing severe after-shocks today.

Looking back, we might smugly click our tongues at the insanity that gripped post-Montaigne Europe, and wonder what the fuss was all about. But Toulmin makes his thesis pressingly relevant to us today by drawing parallels with events and situations that are still with us today.

The author rounds out his argument by giving a brief but clear accounting of the major players (French and German) today who are redefining the concept of modernity from mutually opposite ends.

Toumin's assessment of the legacy of modernity--however it may have got started--is one of of hope and optimism as he reminds the reader that in making the distinction between 'power' and 'force' (Hobbes) there is also this thing called ' moral influence' which, he hopes, will serve as the engine of renewal and humanization of 'modernity' in all its possibilities.

Maybe this is not the best or the most comprehensive account of the origin of post-modernism and/or its tendencies, but the book does give you about a 120 degree panorama--through a powerful telescope. Isn't that enough in a book?

Cosmopolis brings it all together! Dreary and disconnected readings of Aquinas, Montaigne and Descartes take on new significance with Toulmin's "revised account" of Modernism. By contextualizing prominent figures, Toulmin provides the novice reader with the opportunity to enjoy and appreciate the philosophical contribution to the historical idiom. His witty, often humorous discourse is essentially readable and familiar. Philosophy can be tedious and intimidating, Toulmin proves it both fundamental and accessible.

Toulmin takes on the task of describing the progression of western philosophy, properly situated in its historical context, from 1600 to the 1980s (!), AND, he makes it understandable! With many cross-disciplinary references, this book integrates several centuries of politics, economics, literature, art, architecture, and, of course, philosophy, especially the philosophy of science. I especially recommend this book for scientists who need an introduction to their discipline's roots.

Stephen Toulmin was, everyone is agreed, a vastly learned nice guy. And he was also a great admirer of the benchmark 'learned nice guy' in the western intellectual tradition, Montaigne. At its core Cosmopolis is really a (very convincing, for those who need it) argument that intellectual life, civilization, and everything else would be much more healthy if we could learn to be a little more like Michael, and that in the last three hundred years we have lost sight of this. For most of its not very great length Cosmopolis makes the argument very effectively, albeit in the manner of a _very, very_ senior intellectual: if you are currently getting down to writing up your thesis, you probably do not want to be doing this at home. The first three chapters on the cultural-social causes and responses to Descartes, Leibniz, Newton and the rest, are entirely convincing.

Alas, the fourth chapter is a disaster: after the birds-eye survey of western culture where he has focussed entirely on cultural sociology, the quality control suddenly falls of a cliff. The last bit is little more than a exercise in po-mo wishful thinking about secular shifts in the Zeitgeist, that reads more like a Feuilliton think-piece than a serious contribution. And I cannot imagine an eye-rolling sentence like 'There are things about Einstein's general theory of relativity, for example, that are understood best if we learn that Einstein was a visual rather than a verbal thinker' in the first three chapters. GR is a model of the fundamental geometry of space time, it's validity and its meaning are entirely independent of the particular way that Einstein derived it, just like the validity of Newtonian mechanics is independent of the way that Newton developed it. Einstein's preferences are interesting to a historian of science, and the public reception of GRT is interesting to a cultural anthropologist (in precisely the way that Toulmin, who is also careful to make, if only implicitly, precisely this distinction, explores for Newton in the first three chapters), but they are irrrelevant to a someone trying to _understand_ it. I'm sure Toumin thought that the 'intentional fallacy' thesis was egregious late modern silliness, and he was right (though, really, who, outside of student dorms, cares) - that does not mean that his attempt to extend the antithesis all the way into theoretical physics isn't egregious postmodern silliness.

The first three chapters are a must read for anyone interested in intellectual history. The rest: na ja.

This book is very useful for anyone who tries to understand the phenomenon of modernity, it origin, and its weaknesses.

The book is a inspiring discussion on modernity and basic aspects of our view of world. It's an essential book in time of the pos-modernity challenge.

A well written book given its academic nature exposing the flimsy threads holding together the rather cold philosophy of scientific positivism generated not just by philosophers and scientists at the begining of the 17th century but giving a clear and tragic reason for its founding and eventual decline. A must read for science students given the persistence of this earlier, discredited philosophy and its pitfalls. The difficulty of current scientists, especially popular writers, to face the truth of the matter makes this book a timely addition.