As Nate pointed out...

... Toulmin isn't out to debunk science or math. He's attempting a recalibration of the processes that give voice to those fields. Toulmin avoids the tendency to discount a previously-held belief to make the one you subscribe to seem more viable. One of my favorite parts of Toulmin's argument is that it doesn't come at the expense of math and science, it comes because of those things. He builds from them. He creates a new context with which we (as young scholars) can view the academic culture of our time. In building his argumentation schmea in this way, Toulmin gave his work room to grow and be adapted over time. He was successful too, as we're reading it over 50 years after it was published.

There were certainly parts of this text that were more relevant to me. As I sloughed through essays 1&2, I got worried that I none of this was going to have anything to do with the Toulmin I thought I was reading. Essay 3 assuaged my fears though, and as the argumentative structure that I knew as the Toulmin model was described, explained, and expanded on, I settled back into a nice rhythm of reading, note taking, and overall enjoyment of the text. I began to skim towards the end of the book, and if we decide, as a class, to spend some more time with this text, I'll certainly look more closely at Essay V: "Epistemological arguments."

I'd like to switch gears for a moment, and reflect on what Hayleysrundown brought up in one of her last posts. The part of the rant (and it was pretty good form as far as rants go), that struck me the most was when she said "I am a now a graduate student who is climbing someones idea of a class ladder, but I am still financially ....how do you say....broke as shit." Hayleysrundown is asking some pretty interesting questions about labor issues, class stratification, and what it means to join the academy. For me the main issues is the capital that is generated by the collective labor of we graduate students. It's true, many of us would not be in the positions we're in if it weren't for the need for teachers of lower-division classes. And yes, teaching a variety of undergraduate courses makes we graduate students more hireable. The intellectual labor that is generated by ambitious, creative, hardworking grad students is not viewed in the same way as other labor-intensive practices. Is there any other profession out there that would expect its workers to do this much work, while continuing to pay them well below the poverty line? Is there any other profession out there that wouldn't give a promotion, a pay raise, or some kind of acknowledgment after 5+ years on the job. Is there any other profession that allows you an entry-level position after 11 years of higher education. No, probably not. Perhaps it's a good thing though, to always keep the institution of higher education separate from the workaday world of capital. Perhaps it's important to see the intrinsic value of what we're doing, no matter what we're being paid and whose salary is 6 digits.
It's awfully hard to keep that in mind when you can hardly afford your books.

On a different note, watch this clip from Thank you For Smoking (based on a hilarious Christopher Buckley novel) with some added 'argumentation commentary' by Argumentics.