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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
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This review is from: Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (Paperback)
This is one of the best books I have read on philosophy of science. Several reviews of this book exist, but nearly all are in professional journals requiring a paid subscription or paid access.
It is sometimes labeled Volume 1. Apparently Toulmin planned for two more volumes but did not fulfill his plan. The chapters after the Introduction are: 1. The Problem of Conceptual Change 2. Intellectual Disciplines: Their Goals and Problems 3. Intellectual Disciplines: Their Historical Development 4. Intellectual Professions: Their Organization and Evolution 5. Interlude: Evolution and the Human Sciences 6. The Variety of Rational Enterprises 7. The Apparent Invariants of Thought and Language 8. Conclusion: The Cunning of Reason Collective understanding is achieved via individuals; the individual's understanding applies concepts taken from the communal stock, or modifies them in ways that represent potential improvements to the stock. The epistemic portrait must be drawn from two distinct points of view, individual and collective, and the portrait must be put in proper perspective. Analogously, language in general is a capacity of the human species, and particular languages represent many alternative expressions of the general capacity. Chapter 1. Toulmin compares absolutist and relativist views of epistemology. An absolutist view holds that standards of rationality are timeless and eternal. Plato, Descartes, and Frege exemplify this view. Euclid's Elements provides a model that meets this standard. A relativist view holds that standards are relative to the time, place, and culture from which it arises. This view is exemplified by R. G. Collingwood, and according to many, Thomas Kuhn. Toulmin contends there is a middle ground -- principles of rationality are historically variable without slipping into a relativism that implies irrationalism. He contends that rationality should not be equated with logicality. The boundaries of these terms are somewhat vague, but an example of logicality would be a deductive system exemplified by Euclidean geometry. Toulmin has much to say about the ideas of Thomas Kuhn. He followed Kuhn's career and observed how Kuhn's views changed over his career. Kuhn believed conceptual change to be an infrequent revolutionary (non-evolutionary) process, during which mutually exclusive paradigms compete to replace one another. Toulmin criticizes the relativist elements in Kuhn's thesis, which says mutually exclusive paradigms provide no ground for comparison (they are incommensurable). Kuhn's thesis has made the relativist error of overemphasizing what varies while ignoring what doesn't vary, the commonality shared by all argumentation or scientific paradigms. Some shared concepts remain. He says Kuhn's separating eras into revolutionary and normal much oversimplify reality. He gives several historical examples to illustrate the continuity of scientific thought even while significant changes occur, especially when seen over an expanse of time. Toulmin uses the law as an analog for science. Much of the time precedent (existing practices, common law) can be followed, but at other times precedent is inadequate and judges must step back, reassess the "big picture" and rule based on what is most reasonable for the circumstances and the future course of the law. Chapter 2. A discipline is looser than a paradigm or tight coherent system. It is a communal tradition of procedures and techniques for dealing with theoretical or practical problems. It goes with a profession, a set of institutions, roles, and people whose purpose is to apply or improve those procedures and techniques. Scientific Problems = Explanatory Ideals (Goals) - Current Capacities. The gap between the two things after the equal sign is a measure of the explanatory distance the particular science has to go towards fulfilling the scientists' expectations, not just their logically consistent hopes. Chapter 3. A science has a genealogy. Well-established concepts provide a background against which currently unsolved problems are discussed. Yet on occasion innovative concepts (variants in an evolutionary biology sense) are introduced. They are studied and tested ("selected") for their suitably. Variants may enable doing a better explanatory job of what is already known or expand what is known to deal with somewhat different problems. Chapter 4. The focus is on a scientific community and the relation of individuals in it to it. At any time there are a few leaders who speak for the profession via being an elected official of an association or recognition in professional journals. Younger members are "apprentices" who gain professional standing by showing their understanding of the discipline and even prominence with advancing the profession's goals. The community is a population and accordingly evolves somewhat like a population of a species. Chapter 5. He relates the development of a science to differing views of evolution - Darwin, Spencer, and Lamarck. Chapter 6. Each science, craft or technology has its own set of ideals, ambitions, and techniques. Yet there are differences in innovation and selection. In the natural science, competition and selection is mostly `internal', whereas in technology it is feasibility, efficiency, and ease of manufacture. He compares, for example, thermodynamics and the development of steam engines. Chapter 7. This is more philosophical and concerns more everyday concepts such as space, time, causality and substance. Why are these more invariant than most scientific concepts? Ideas of Strawson, Piaget, and especially Kant. The topic then turns to language and the ideas of Chomsky. Chapter 8. He hopes to show that despite the diversity of concepts and rational standards in different human endeavors, we can nevertheless - appropriately sometimes - define an impartial standpoint of rationality, and so escape the threats or temptations of relativism. The rationality of natural science and other collective disciplines are not intrinsically only about logic, narrowly speaking. Propositional systems and logic are legitimate instruments, but scientific explanation requires more. Karl Popper's a priori quest was about the acceptability of propositions, not the applicability of concepts.
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