Stephen Edelston Toulmin (born 1922) was an important ethical philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century.

Stephen Edelston Toulmin was born in London in 1922. He was educated at Cambridge University and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1948. He began his teaching career in 1949 and taught in many different academic institutions, including Oxford University, the University of Melbourne (Australia), Leeds University, New York University, Columbia University, Stanford University, Hebrew University (Jerusalem), the University of London, Brandeis University, Michigan State, the University of California in Santa Cruz, and the University of Southern California. Beginning in 1973 he was the professor of social thought and philosophy within the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Toulmin published extensively; among his many books are The Place of Reason in Ethics (1950); The Uses of Argument (1958); Philosophy of Science (1953); The Fabric of the Heavens (co-authored, 1960); Foresight and Understanding (1960); The Architecture of Matter...