Scientific Inquiry: Invention and Test (Toulmin's Model)

TOULMIN'S MODEL OF ARGUMENTATION

Claims:-

Scientific inquiry is a long and time-consuming process with forming hypotheses, testing predictions and an interdisciplinary search. The searchers for truth cannot remain confined to a single discipline.

Grounds:-

Ignaz Semmelweis , a Hungarian physician, searched for the cause of  childbed fevers which caused four times more death in his ward compared to others. Dr. Semmelweis examined some hypotheses while trying to find the actual cause of the death. He had formulated many hypotheses on the subject and tested each of them .Through his continuous effort testing out the assumptions, he found the answer in 4 years from 1844 to 1848.

Warrant:-

Hypotheses gives new ways and directions to a researcher. Testing hypotheses drops out irrelevant facts from study. Semmelweis’ testing of  hypotheses lead him to the truth. In 1847, accidentally, Dr. Semmelweis’ colleague Kolletschka received a small wound in the finger from the scalpel while performing autopsy. After sometime, he developed the symptoms of the childbed fever and died painfully. Then, Dr. Semmelweis concluded that an unknown infectious ‘cadavaric matter’ that he, his colleagues, and the medical students carried was behind the death of the women.

Backing:-

He ordered all his medical students to wash their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime before making examination. The mortality from childbed fever promptly began to decrease. The mortality in the Second Division was lower because the women were attended by the midwives whose training did not include anatomical instruction by dissection of vadavars. The hypothesis was further proved by the fact that mortality among the women who reached hospital after the birth was lower because they were rarely examined after admission. Any hypothesis thoroughly tested, will yield results which is either true or false. Semmelweis’ hypothesis that lack of proper cleanliness by medical professionals after dissecting corpses being the cause of childbed fever ended up true.

 

Qualifier:-

Scientific discovery most likely is dependent on formulating hypotheses and testing them. Semmelweis’ hypothesis failing definitely led him to the correct hypothesis. Semmelweis broadened his hypothesis through further clinical experiences. On one occasion, he and his associates first examined a woman in labour who was suffering from festering cervical cancer. Then, they checked other twelve women without disinfecting the hands. Eleven of them died of puerperal fever. Semmelweis concluded that childbed fever can be caused not only by cadaveric material but also by ‘putrid matter derived from living organisms’.

Rebuttal:-

Interdisciplinary search may not always be necessary for hypothesis. In modern sciences, such as quantum mechanics, sufficient amounts of testing for hypotheses may not be possible.