Log in Free trial  A Philosophy beyond the Limits of Rationality
; in Pursuit of Theoretical Certainty, We've Lost What's
Reasonable  Article excerpt  According to Stephen Toulmin, a
professor at the University of Southern California, there are
signs all around us, from medicine to economics, that modern
science needs an infusion of common sense.  As Toulmin shows in
this readable and fascinating account, the practice of reason
that produced modern science goes back to the 17th century, when
traditional reasonableness was replaced by the model of
geometry. As the goal of reason, likelihood was replaced by
certainty; nature, including human nature, was replaced by
Newton's nature, predictable and self-consistent.  Eventually -
and this is perhaps one of Toulmin's most challenging insights -
what came of this change is the system of disciplines that
govern modern intellectual life. And so research universities
may resemble madhouses, each researcher locked in his dream of
reason, incapable of addressing the nee