Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: coberst on 13/11/2008 12:09:53
-
What are Common Sense Voices?
I claim that one cannot enter, for the first time, into the territory of some domains of knowledge while listening to common sense voices. Our common sense will immediately reject some facts because those facts are contrary to common sense.
You must still these instinctive reactions because common sense knows nothing about many things. The physicist must still her common sense reaction at the results of some experiments regarding the inner working of the atom.
The inner working of human nature can be as mysterious to common sense as is the inner reality of the atom.
We can see only what we are prepared to see. Common sense does not prepare us to see many things. We have to creep up on certain matters and withhold judgment until we are intellectually sophisticated enough to judge their reality.
-
Common sense stops you from walking front of moving vehicles. It stops you from spending money on scams.
It should also help you to be rational when assessing every new idea which comes along.
There are some truly great new ideas and there are millions of loopy ones.
-
A lot of Descartes' work was done on the big question "What can I know" where he questions the reliability of our senses, particularly what we see (perceive).
Often, but not always, common sense doesn't give us the answer. I'm still waiting for a simple demonstration, using stuff available to enquirers up until the nineteenth-century, that the Sun does not go round the Earth. We know now that it doesn't but for a long while it was conterintuitive to suggest otherwise - common sense said so!
-
Foucault's Pendulum is a clincher that the Earth rotates. That's a start.
A pendulum will also tell you the acceleration due to Gravity, which has very strong implications about what must be going on 'up there'.
Then there are the tides; more about Gravity and relative strengths of pull.
Three off the top of my head which are hard to justify with a Geocentric System.
People were quite justified in resisting something so way-out as the Heliocentric System. Only a loony would have gone for it without some deep thought. They applied 'common sense' until they were really convinced by rigorous argument. That's what I'd recommend every time.
I'd also point out that my common sense isn't anyone else's common sense. Or, in the light of what 'common' might mean, perhaps I'm interpreting it wrongly. At least most of it is in common with other half-decently informed physicists.
I would say that the Heliocentric model is now 'common sense'.
-
Common sense—the unreflective opinions of ordinary people
-
By that definition, no common sense views are relevant to a Forum like this.
-
Common sense does not hinder discovery or learning, but it can prevent us from making silly mistakes when applied properly. Common sense should tell you that, if you apply it properly!!!
-
Common sense—the unreflective opinions of ordinary people
This is the definition from my Webster's and this is what I meant in the OP by the phrase "common sense". Like most words one can find many different definitions apparently.
Many people think that common sense is not common; they must be thinking about the definition "Sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgment". I am inclined to agree.
-
So now we've done the semantics, where to?
There is a fine line between a usefully open mind and a totally gullible one. To advance in Science, you have to work close to that line.