Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts

Quite an erudite book. The author argues for an evolutionary analysis of human thought where each discipline, culture or epoch may have its own criteria for rationality. Interesting stuff, and his analysis of the nature of scientific disciplines and scientific thought is excellent. However, I don't think the arguments quite reach the broader goals the author claims for himself, it all becomes a bit muddled especially in the final section of the book. But I did like this book and it certainly gave me a lot to think about for the future. As far as I could determine, the intended follow-up volumes 2 and 3 were never published.

Human Understanding by Stephen E. Toulmin (1972)

Human Understanding, Vol. 1 : The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts by Stephen Toulmin (1977)