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In 1943 Stephen graduated from King's College, Cambridge with his Bachelor of Arts degree where he was a Cambridge Apostle. He was later hired at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Germany where he primarily worked on aircraft production for British forces in the Royal Air Force. He was a junior scientific officer, first at the Malvern Radar Research and Development Station. -
In 1947 Stephen Toulmin returned to Cambridge after World War ll ended to earn his PhD in Philosophy where he then published his dissertation of An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics in 1950. While studying at Cambridge Stephen met the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose examination of the relationship between the uses and the meanings of language shaped the foundation of Stephens work. -
In 1949, Stephen began teaching the Philosophy of Science at Oxford University. He was distinguished for teaching at other universities throughout the world, including Melbourne University, Leeds University, Columbia University, Michigan State University, Brandeis University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. -
While at the University of California, Stephen published his book called Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts in 1972, which examined the cause and progression of conceptual change. Stephen used a comparison between conceptual change and Charles Darwin's model of biological evolution to analyze the process of conceptual change as an evolutionary process. -
https://youtu.be/_axvwGd2WIo
Stephen Toulmin throughout all 7 parts suggests that anthropologists have been tempted to side with relativists due to the fact they have noticed the impact of cultural difference on rational arguments. -
In 1997, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Toulmin for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His work transformed debates in the philosophy of science, meta-philosophy, humanism, communication, modernity and ethics. Those close to him stated "Many of us learned from him what it meant to be a scholar".