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Steven toulmin human understanding. Tulmin. Sufficient reason approach

Stephen Edelston Toulmin(Eng. Stephen Edelston Toulmin; March 25, 1922, London - December 4, 2009, California) - British philosopher, author of scientific papers and professor. Influenced by the ideas of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his work to the analysis of moral foundations. 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 consists of six interrelated components that are used to analyze argumentation and 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 Geoffrey Adelson Toulmin and Doris Holman Toulmin. In 1942 he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from King's College, Cambridge University. Toulmin was soon hired as a junior research fellow at the Ministry of Aircraft Industry, first at the Radar Research and Development Station at 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 in 1947 received a master of arts degree, and then a Ph.D. At Cambridge, Toulmin met the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose research on the relationship between language use and meaning strongly influenced Toulmin's thinking. In Toulmin's doctoral dissertation, Reason in Ethics, Wittgenstein's ideas on the analysis of ethical arguments (1948) can be traced.

After graduating from Cambridge, from 1949 to 1954 Toulmin taught Philosophy of History at the University of Oxford. It was during this period that he wrote his first book: The Philosophy of Science (1953). From 1954 to 1955 Toulmin served as visiting professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne in Australia. After which he returned to England to head the Philosophy Chair at the University of Leeds. He held this position from 1955 to 1959. While working in Leeds, he published one of his most important books in the field of rhetoric: Ways to Use 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 - Toulmin's colleagues at Columbia, Stanford and New York Universities, where in 1959 he lectured as a visiting professor, the book was approved. At one time, when Toulmin taught in the United States, Wayne Brockrid and Douglas Aninger presented his work to students studying communications, as they believed that it was precisely in his work that the structural model, important for the analysis and criticism of rhetorical arguments, was most successfully presented. In 1960 Toulmin returned to London to take up the post of Head of the School for 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 arranged for the posthumous publication of several editions by his close friend N.R. Hanson. While at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Toulmin published 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 development of science and Darwin's evolutionary development model to show that the development of science is evolutionary. In 1973, as a professor on the Committee for Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he co-authored the book Wittgenstein's Vienna (1973) with historian Alan Janick. It emphasizes the importance of history in human beliefs. In contrast to the 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 Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, founded by the US Congress. During this period, he co-authored the book The Abuse of Causality (1988) with Albert Johnsen, which describes ways to resolve moral issues.

(1922-1998) - English philosopher of the post-positivist direction. Doctor of Philosophy (1948, dissertation "Reason in Ethics", published in 1949). Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at Oxford (until 1960). In the 1960s he regularly lectured in the United States. He taught at the University of Chicago (since 1973). After retiring in 1992, he is engaged in "multi-ethnic and transnational studies", lectures in Sweden, Austria, and the Netherlands.

T.'s early works - "Probability" (1950), "Philosophy of Science" (1953), etc. - contain criticism of the neopositivist concept of science. Subsequently, "Wittgenstein's Vienna" (1973, co-authored with A. Yanik), "Methods of Using Argumentation" (1958), "The Origin of Science" (vols. 1-3, 1961-1965), "Foresight and Understanding" (1961), “Human Understanding” (1972), “Knowledge and Action” (1976), etc. T. formulates his own research program in epistemology, the main idea of ​​which is the idea of ​​the historical formation and evolution of standards of rationality and “collective understanding” in science. T.'s approach is concretized in discussions with other representatives of postpositivism (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and others) and takes shape in the original evolutionist concept of science. Within the framework of this concept of technology, a number of heuristic concepts and concepts were introduced: “rational initiative,” “conceptual selection,” “the matrix of understanding,” “intellectual ecology,” and others, which set the reality of evolutionary processes in science. Critically evaluating the biologist interpretation of "intellectual evolution" given by Mach, T. considers Darwin's population theory of variability and natural selection only as an illustration of a more general model of historical explanation. Direct analogies, according to T., are impossible here. In general, this model includes four main theses: 1) A compromise between "realistic" and "nominal" attitudes in the issue of identifying historical formations. Accordingly, an evolutionary explanation of conceptual development must explain two aspects: on the one hand, the genealogical sequence and continuity, thanks to which individual disciplines are identified, and on the other hand, deep long-term changes leading to their transformation and change. 2) Both continuity and change are explained in terms of a single two-way process, in this case a process of conceptual innovation and selection. The continuous emergence of intellectual innovations is balanced by the continuous process of critical selection of conceptual options. The critical process in science thus acts in the function of managing selection. 3) This two-way process can produce noticeable conceptual changes only if there are additional conditions ("intellectual environment"). There must be suitable "competition forums" and "environmental niches" in which intellectual innovations can survive long enough to show their strengths and weaknesses. 4) The environmental requirements of the environment determine the local requirements for evolutionary "success". Accordingly, the explanation of the "success" of certain intellectual initiatives involves consideration of the "ecology" of a particular cultural and historical situation. In any problem situation, disciplinary selection "recognizes" those competing innovations that are best adapted to the "requirements" of the local "intellectual environment". These "requirements" cover both the problems that each concept is intended to solve and other established concepts with which it must coexist. The relationship between the concepts of "environmental requirement" and "niche", "adaptability" and "success" are the subject of "intellectual ecology". According to T., the reality of science in the evolutionary approach is strikingly different from the neopositivist view of science as a logical system. Science is viewed by science rather as a collection of "historical populations" of logically independent concepts and theories, each of which has its own history, structure, and meaning, distinct from the others. As T. himself wrote, “the intellectual content of any rational activity does not form either a single logical system or a temporal sequence of such systems. Rather, it is an intellectual initiative whose rationality lies in the procedures that govern its historical development and evolution. Thus, the scientific disciplines appear in T. as historically developing rational initiatives in which concepts find their collective application. A rational initiative is that “life form” in which, on the one hand, the process of translation or transfer of norms and intellectual means takes place, and on the other hand, the evolutionary process of conceptual changes and selection described above takes place. Science, according to T., is fundamentally dual: it is a set of intellectual disciplines and a professional institution. The mechanism of evolution of rational initiatives consists in their interaction with intra-scientific (intellectual) and extra-scientific (social, political) factors. Disciplinary and professional, internal and external aspects of science correlate with each other according to the principle of complementarity - these are different projections of the same evolutionary process. The disciplinary aspect of intellectual history is rational, justifying and prospective, while the professional aspect is causal, explanatory and retrospective. A complete explanation of the conceptual development in any rational initiative at each of its stages must illuminate both the formation (in terms of causal terms and retrospective modality) and the justification (in terms of rational grounds and prospective modality) of the projects of this initiative. The evolutionary approach of T. changes both the vision of scientific thinking itself and the idea of ​​rationality. In opposition to neopositivist ideas about scientific thinking as strict adherence to logical norms, T. brings to the fore another type of organization of scientific thinking, based on understanding. Understanding in science, according to T., is set, on the one hand, by compliance with the “matrices” (standards) of understanding adopted in the scientific community in a given historical period, on the other hand, by problem situations and precedents that serve as the basis for “improving understanding”. Analyzing conceptual points of view, the epistemologist must address the situation of understanding (or problem situation) that the scientist faces and in relation to which he decides which intellectual means need to be introduced and updated in this situation. Thus, the conceptual content of a scientific discipline is determined not only by a set of theoretical statements to be formalized, but also by practical procedures for the use of intellectual tools and the functions that these tools performed in certain problem situations. The standards of understanding themselves change in the course of the "conceptual selection" of innovations. Therefore, scientific rationality cannot be defined by universal logical norms, but rather should be considered by analogy with case law in jurisprudence. “Rationality is not an attribute of a logical or conceptual system as such, but an attribute of human actions and initiatives in which separate sets of concepts temporarily intersect ...” Establishing the rationality of certain initiatives is a kind of “judicial procedure”, and not a formal logical analysis. (According to T., the decisive shift that separates the postmodern disciplines of modernity from their immediate predecessors, the modernist sciences, occurs in ideas about the nature of objectivity: from the dispassionate point of view of an uninterested viewer to the interaction of the views of the participant-observer.) In addition to epistemological issues, T. turned to questions of ethics and philosophy of religion. In these works, he sought to reveal the dependence of the authority and validity of moral and religious judgments on the accepted procedures of explanation and schemes of understanding implemented in language practices. So, in the study "Cosmopolis" (1989), T., analyzing the phenomenon of "modernity" of the New Age, interprets the revolution in the natural sciences of this period as a response to the multidimensional spiritual crisis of Europe at the beginning of the 17th century. Overcoming the universal continental chaos of the 30-year war was feasible, according to T., only in the context of the proclamation of "Order" as the foundation of the socio-political structure of society. Only at the end of the 20th century, according to T., as a result of the spread of synergetics approaches (see Synergetics) and the globalization of world processes, does a pivotal cardinal transformation of the worldviews of mankind become feasible.

An American philosopher of the analytical direction, he 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 neo-positivist program of substantiating 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 niya. The latter change in the course of the evolution of scientific theories, which he interprets as a continuous selection of conceptual innovations. Theories themselves are considered not as logical systems of propositions, but as a special kind of "population" of concepts. This biological analogy plays an essential role in evolutionary epistemology in general and in Toulmin in particular. The development of science is portrayed by him like biological evolution. Scientific theories and traditions are subject to conservation (survivability) 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 those populations that are most adapted to it to “survive”. 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 in 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 be influenced by other influences, for example. ideological support or economic priorities, the socio-political role of the leaders of scientific schools or their authority in the scientific community. The internal (rationally reconstructed) and external (depending on non-scientific factors) history of science are complementary sides of the same evolutionary process. Toulmin nevertheless emphasizes the decisive role of rational factors. The “carriers” of scientific rationality are the representatives of the “scientific elite”, on whom the success of “artificial” selection and the “bringing out” 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 evolutionist model of the development of knowledge. In his epistemological analyzes, he tried to do without an objectivist interpretation of truth, leaning towards an instrumentalist and pragmatist interpretation of it. He spoke out against dogmatism in epistemology, against the unjustified universalization of certain criteria of rationality, and demanded a concrete historical approach to the development of science, involving data from sociology, social psychology, the history of science, and other disciplines. In works on the 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 adopted in these areas, formulated or practiced in the language and serving to harmonize social behavior. However, these rules and schemes do not have universal significance, 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 the traditional, Enlightenment-derived, “humanistic” ideas about rationality: human rationality is determined by the context of social and political goals that science also serves.
Cit.: 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: The structure and development of science. M., 1978; Human understanding. 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; Mozart in psychology.- “VF ”, 1981, No. 10.
Lit .: Andrianova T. V., Rakitova A. I. Philosophy of Science S. Tulmina.- 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.

Stephen Edelston Toulmin(English) Stephen Edelston Toulmin) is a British philosopher, author and professor.

Stephen Toulmin was born in London, England on March 25, 1922 to Geoffrey Adelson Toulmin and Doris Holman Toulmin. In 1942 he received a Bachelor of Arts from King's College, Cambridge University. Toulmin was soon hired as a junior research fellow at the Ministry of Aircraft Industry, first at the Radar Research and Development Station at 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 in 1947 received a Master of Arts degree, and then a Ph.D. At Cambridge, Toulmin met the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose research on the relationship between language use and meaning strongly influenced Toulmin's thinking. In Toulmin's doctoral dissertation, "Reason in Ethics", Wittgenstein's ideas on the analysis of ethical arguments (1948) can be traced.

After graduating from Cambridge, from 1949 to 1954 Toulmin taught Philosophy of History at the University of Oxford. It was during this period that he wrote his first book: "Philosophy of Science"(1953). From 1954 to 1955 Toulmin served as visiting professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne in Australia. After which he returned to England to head the Philosophy Chair at the University of Leeds. He held this position from 1955 to 1959. While working in Leeds, he publishes one of his most significant books in the field of rhetoric: (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 - Toulmin's colleagues at Columbia, Stanford and New York Universities, where in 1959 he lectured as a visiting professor, the book was approved. At one time, when Toulmin taught in the United States, Wayne Brockrid and Douglas Aninger presented his work to students studying communications, as they believed that it was precisely in his work that the structural model, important for the analysis and criticism of rhetorical arguments, was most successfully presented. In 1960 Toulmin returned to London to take up the post of Head of the School for the History of Ideas, Nuffield Foundation.

In 1965, Toulmin returned to the United States, where he has worked to this day, teaching and researching at various universities around the country. In 1967 Toulmin arranged for the posthumous publication of several editions by his close friend Hanson. While working at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Toulmin published his Human Understanding in 1972, in which he explored the causes and processes of change associated with the development of science. In this book, he uses an unprecedented comparison between the development of science and Darwin's evolutionary development model to show that the development of science is evolutionary. In 1973, as a professor on the Social Thought Committee at the University of Chicago, he co-authored a book with historian Alan Janick. "Wittgenstein's Vienna"(1973). It emphasizes the importance of history in human beliefs. In contrast to the 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 Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, founded by the US Congress. During this period, he co-authored a book with Albert Johnsen "Abuse of Causality"(1988), which describes ways to resolve moral issues.

One of his last works is "Cosmopolis", written in 1990. He died December 4, 2009 in California.

Philosophy of Tulmin

metaphilosophy

In many of his writings, Toulmin pointed out that absolutism was of limited practical value. Absolutism comes from Platonic idealistic formal logic, which advocates universal truth, and accordingly absolutists believe that moral issues can be resolved by sticking to standard moral principles, regardless of context. Toulmin argues that many of these so-called standard principles are not relevant to real situations that people face in everyday life.

To reinforce his claim, Toulmin introduces the concept of fields of argumentation. In work "Ways to Use Argumentation"(1958) Toulmin states that some aspects of the argument differ from field to field and hence are called "field-dependent", while other aspects of the argument are the same for all fields and are called "field-invariant". According to Toulmin, the disadvantage of absolutism lies in its ignorance of the "field-dependent" aspect of the argument, absolutism admits that all aspects of the argument are invariant.

While acknowledging the flaws inherent in absolutism, Toulmin avoids the shortcomings of absolutism in his theory by not resorting to relativism, which, in his opinion, does not provide grounds for separating moral and immoral arguments. In the book "Human Understanding"(1972) Toulmin argues that anthropologists have been swayed to the side of relativists because they have drawn attention to the impact of cultural change on rational argumentation, in other words, anthropologists and relativists place too much importance on the "field-dependent" aspect of argumentation, and are unaware of the existence "invariant" aspect. In an attempt to solve the problems of absolutists and relativists, Toulmin in his work develops standards that are neither absolutist nor relativistic and will serve to assess the value of ideas.

Humanization of modernity

In Cosmopolis, Toulmin searches for the origins of the modern emphasis on universality and criticizes both modern science and philosophers for ignoring practical issues and favoring abstract and theoretical issues. In addition, Toulmin felt a decrease in morality in the field of science, for example, insufficient attention to environmental issues in the production of an atomic bomb.

Toulmin argues that in order to solve this problem, it is necessary to return to humanism, which implies four "returns":

    Return to specific individual cases that deal with practical moral issues that take place in everyday life. (as opposed to theoretical principles, which have limited practicality)

    Return to local or specific cultural and historical aspects

    Return to timeliness (from eternal problems to things whose rational meaning depends on the timeliness of our decision)

Toulmin follows this critique in the book "Back to Basics"(2001), where he tries to highlight the negative impact of universalism on the social sphere, and discusses the contradictions between mainstream ethical theory and ethical predicaments in life.

Argumentation

Finding the lack of practical significance of absolutism, Toulmin seeks to develop various types of argumentation. Unlike the theoretical argument of the absolutists, Toulmin's practical argument focuses on the verification function. Toulmin believes that argumentation is less a process of putting forward hypotheses, including the discovery of new ideas, and more a process of verifying existing ideas.

Toulmin believes that a good argument can be successful in verification and will be resistant to criticism. In the book "Ways to Use Argumentation", Toulmin proposed a set of tools consisting of six interrelated components for the analysis of arguments:

Statement. Statement must be completed. For example, if a person is trying to convince the listener that he is a British citizen, then his statement would be "I am a British citizen". (one)

Evidence (Data). This is the fact which is referred to as on the basis of statements. For example, a person in the first situation can support his statement with others. data"I was born in Bermuda." (2)

Foundations. A statement that allows you to go from evidence(2) to approval(one). In order to move from evidence(2) "I was born in Bermuda" to approval(1) "I am a UK citizen" person must use grounds to bridge the gap between approval(1) and evidence(2) stating that "A person born in Bermuda can legally be a British citizen".

Support. Additions aimed at confirming the statement expressed in grounds. Support should be used when grounds by themselves are not convincing enough for readers and listeners.

Refutation / counterarguments. A statement showing the restrictions that may apply. An example counterargument would be: "A person born in Bermuda can legally be a British citizen only if he has not betrayed Britain and is not a spy for another country."

Determinant. Words and phrases expressing the author's degree of confidence in his statement. These are words and phrases such as "probably", "possibly", "impossible", "certainly", "presumably" or "always". The statement "I am definitely a British citizen" carries a much greater degree of certainty than the statement "I am presumably a British citizen".

The first three elements are: statement», « evidence" and " grounds” are considered as the main components of practical reasoning, while the last three: “ determinant», « support" and " denials' are not always necessary. Toulmin did not expect this schema to be applied in the field of rhetoric and communication, since originally this argumentation schema was to be used to analyze the rationality of arguments, usually in a courtroom.

Ethics

In his doctoral dissertation, Reason in Ethics (1950), Toulmin reveals the Sufficient Reasoning Approach of Ethics, criticizing the subjectivism and emotionalism of philosophers such as Alfred Ayer, as it prevents the application of the administration of justice to ethical reasoning.

Reviving causality, Toulmin sought to find a golden mean between the extremes of absolutism and relativism. Causality was widely practiced in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance to resolve moral issues. During the modern period, it was practically not mentioned, but with the advent of postmodernity, they started talking about it again, it was revived. In his book "Abuse of Causality"(1988), co-authored with Albert Johnsen, Toulmin demonstrates the effectiveness of causality in practical reasoning during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Causality borrows absolutist principles without referring to absolutism; only standard principles (such as the sinlessness of existence) are used as the basis for reference in moral argument. The individual case is subsequently compared with the general case, and they are opposed to each other. If the individual case completely coincides with the general case, it immediately receives a moral assessment, which is based on the moral principles described in the general case. If the individual case differs from the general case, then all disagreements are severely criticized in order to subsequently arrive at a rational solution.

Through the causality procedure, Toulmin and Johnsen identified three problem situations:

    The general case matches the individual case, but only ambiguously

    Two general cases may correspond to one individual case, while they may completely contradict each other.

    There may be an unprecedented individual case for which no general case can be found to compare and contrast them with each other.

Toulmin thus confirmed his earlier conviction about the importance of comparison with moral reasoning. In the theories of absolutism and relativism, this importance is not even mentioned.

Philosophy of Science

Toulmin was critical of Kuhn's relativistic ideas and was of the opinion that mutually exclusive paradigms do not provide a basis for comparison, in other words, Kuhn's statement is a relativist error, and consists in overemphasizing the "field - dependent" aspects of the argument, while simultaneously ignoring, "field - invariant or the commonality shared by all arguments (scientific paradigms). In contrast to Kuhn's revolutionary model, Toulmin proposed an evolutionary model for the development of science, similar to the Darwinian model of evolution. Toulmin argues that the development of science is a process of innovation and selection. Innovation means the emergence of many variants of theories, and selection means the survival of the most stable of these theories.

Innovation occurs when professionals in a particular field begin to perceive familiar things in a new way, not as they perceived them before; selection exposes innovative theories to a process of discussion and exploration. The most powerful theories that have been discussed and researched will take the place of traditional theories, or additions will be made to traditional theories. From the perspective of absolutists, theories can be either reliable or unreliable, regardless of context. From the point of view of relativists, one theory can neither be better nor worse than another theory from a different cultural context. Toulmin is of the opinion that evolution depends on a process of comparison that determines whether a theory will be able to improve standards better than another theory can.

The concept of the American philosopher Stephen Toulmin (1922-1997) also lies within the framework of the socio-psychological direction of the reconstruction of the development of scientific knowledge.

From Toulmin's point of view, Kuhn's model is in irresolvable 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 the continuity in the description of science, Toulmin proposes to use a scheme of evolution similar to the theory of natural selection by Charles Darwin.

The development of science, Tulmin 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 evaluated 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 stream of problems and concepts, the most valuable of them 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 reassessment and change of rationality with any deep crisis, because the crisis is a painful phenomenon. Rather, he considers them as situations of choice and preference in the context of constant and insignificant mutations of concepts. At the same time, 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 the struggle of ideas for existence through the best adaptation to their environment.

Scientific theories and traditions, according to Toulmin, are subject to processes of conservative persistence (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 the effectiveness in solving problems and assessment 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 meticulous in working out those problems that require urgent solution, 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., which justify his preliminary expectation. Expectations themselves are guided by the historical image of rationality, "ideals of natural order". What does not fit into the "matrix of understanding" is considered "anomalous". The elimination of "anomalies" is the most important stimulus for scientific evolution. An explanation is evaluated 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 intra-scientific and extra-scientific (social, economic, ideological) factors that complement each other. Nevertheless, Tulmin assigns the decisive role to intrascientific (rational) factors.

The history of science appears in Toulmin as a process of implementing and alternating the standards of rational explanation, taken together with the procedures for their verification and testing for practical effectiveness, unfolded in time, and science - "as an evolving 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 "breeding" model of science.

Undoubtedly, Toulmin succeeds in noticing important dialectical features of the development of science, in particular, that the evolution of scientific theories is influenced by historically changing "standards" and "strategies" of rationality, which, in turn, are subjected to feedback from evolving disciplines. An important element of his concept is the use of data from sociology, social psychology, economics, the history of science, and the establishment of a concrete historical approach to the development of science.

At the same time, he absolutizes the biological analogy as a scheme for describing scientific processes and relativizes the image of science, which breaks down into the history of the survival and extinction of conceptual populations that adapt to certain historical data (“environmental requirements”). In addition, neither T. Kuhn nor St. Tulmin 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.

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