“Apollo 11 landing is real” –believe is or not? If not, doesn’t matter for the present. Not long ago, many, including the so-called intellectual ones, the rationalistic as well as men of religion sincerely believed that the Earth Planet was flat! Those who did not agree with this argument were punished with death.
Stephen Toulmin is a British logician. He had his problems to understand the concepts off formal logic to explain day o day arguments, and hence he developed his own model for practical reasoning. It is known as Toulmin Model Argument (Ref: commfaculty. fullerton. edu/rgass/toulmin). The first triad of his model consists of three basic elements:
Firstly, the claim of the arguer! In the present case, the claim is, Apollo 11 landing is real.” One, who makes the claim, does it so for its acceptance. So, what next? Data, the facts to support to this need to be offered and they are clearly available in the present case. The first steps taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969 were widely shown, and repeatedly broadcasted. The science journals, newspapers of international repute, gave blow by blow account of the mission from the launch of the spacecraft to its return to Earth..
As for this third condition, a warrant for connecting the grounds to the claim that Apollo 11 landing is real, you have solid unassailable grounds. On completion of the mission, the astronauts returned to Earth and they had brought samples from another planetary body, the moon. The astronauts had completed their designated mission, “to perform a manned lunar landing and return the mission safely to Earth.
The fourth condition is, the backing, the theoretical experimental foundations for the warrant needs to be shown. In the present case, such conditions have been shown not only implicitly but explicitly. The innumerable photographs of the landing of the Apollo 11 on the crater of the moon, exhibits with regard to the conditions obtaining on the moon, and the samples from the moon are solid backing for the claim Now, about the appropriate modal qualifiers to temper the claim are offered .The claim, “Apollo 11 landing is real,” is theoretically and scientifically verifiable statement. The launch of Apollo 11 was widely announced and precise timings were given about the launch. The Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched from Cape Kennedy at 13:32:00 UT on July 16, 1969.”
And finally about the possibility of rebuttal of the claim, ‘Apollo ii landing is real,’ the same is impossible to refute. Viewed from any angle of logic, both inductive and deductive, there is no chance whatsoever, to refute the claim. This statement, therefore, passes all tests of logic.