Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity

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.

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

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.

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'.