Return to reason / Stephen Toulmin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Toulmin, Stephen, 1922-2009.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reasoning.

Logic.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 243 p.)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

After the ravages of global conflict and a Cold War, how are we to master our doubts and face the 21st century with hope? This text argues that the potential to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of knowledge.

The turmoil and brutality of the twentieth century have made it increasingly difficult to maintain faith in the ability of reason to fashion a stable and peaceful world. After the ravages of global conflict and a Cold War that divided the world's loyalties, how are we to master our doubts and face the twenty-first century with hope? In Return to Reason , Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of knowledge. The centuries-old dominance of rationality, a mathematical mode of reasoning modeled on theory and universal certainties, has diminished the value of reasonableness, a system of humane judgments based on personal experience and practice. To this day, academic disciplines such as economics and professions such as law and medicine often value expert knowledge and abstract models above the testimony of diverse cultures and the practical experience of individuals. Now, at the beginning of a new century, Toulmin sums up a lifetime of distinguished work and issues a powerful call to redress the balance between rationality and reasonableness. His vision does not reject the valuable fruits of science and technology, but requires awareness of the human consequences of our discoveries. Toulmin argues for the need to confront the challenge of an uncertain and unpredictable world, not with inflexible ideologies and abstract theories, but by returning to a more humane and compassionate form of reason, one that accepts the diversity and complexity that is human nature as an essential beginning for all intellectual inquiry.

Contents:

Preface 1 Introduction: Rationality and Certainty 2 How Reason Lost Its Balance 3 The Invention of Disciplines 4 Economics, or the Physics That Never Was 5 The Dreams of Rationalism 6 Rethinking Method 7 Practical Reason and the Clinical Arts 8 Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 The Trouble with Disciplines 10 Redressing the Balance 11 The Varieties of Experience 12 The World of Where and When 13 Postscript: Living with Uncertainty Notes Index

Notes:

Originally published: 2001.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-238) and index.

ISBN:

9780674267824

0674267826

9780674044425

0674044428

OCLC:

923111011