Stephen Toul­min, cre­ator of the Toul­min model of argu­men­ta­tion, has passed away at the age of 87.

The Toul­min model proved to be highly use­ful for ana­lyz­ing the strengths and weak­nesses of argu­ments. It is com­monly used in debate man­u­als, for exam­ple, but its appli­ca­tions have extended to the rhetor­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of lit­er­ary texts, com­puter sci­ence and arti­fi­cial intelligence.