Stephen Toulmin welcomes you to the end of modernity
Historian and philosopher of science Stephen Toulmin welcomes you to the end of modernity, at least modernity as we’ve imagined it. By modernity, he does not mean modern gadgets. By end he does not mean an end to progress in the natural sciences, nor in human affairs in general. Instead, he is talking about a way of thinking which has held us in thrall since the 17th century, for good and for ill, and is now giving way fitfully to a new (he would say “old”), more flexible worldview.
Toulmin’s book Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity is not new. It was published in 1990. Its argument will be of interest to anyone concerned with issues of sustainability including climate change and resource depletion.
Toulmin offers an historical account of how this view we call modern arose, and he catalogues its tenets. The ones that are of particular interest to me are as follows:
- Nature is governed by fixed laws set up at the Creation.
- The material substance of physical nature is essentially inert.
- Physical objects and processes cannot think.
- At the Creation, God combined natural objects into stable systems.
- The essence of humanity is rational thought and action.
Even casual readers will notice the theological content in these statements. But, we must remember that Sir Issac Newton and René Descartes–who are credited with creating most of the intellectual scaffolding of modern thought–were deeply religious men. The theological references may have been stripped away in our own age. But the tenets remain.
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