Science, and Commonsense

pp. 372-375

in: Joseph Agassi, Science and culture, Berlin, Springer, 2003

Abstract

Our understanding of both science and commonsense is deficient. This is obvious from disagreements about them. We disagree about both the scientific and the commonsense character of both scientific and commonsense ideas. The status of many items in both science and commonsense regularly meet with new challenges and undergoes change. We reject many ideas that were once commonsense. (Victorian ideas about masculinity and femininity serve as rubberstamp example.) We may limit both to what we commonly endorse. We often consider ideas commonsense if and only if they are standard, if most people with healthy normal understanding endorse them with no hesitation. Yet, at times we deem some people eminently blessed with commonsense, inconsistently with the idea of commonsense as standard: these people often come up with ideas that become standard. By what criterion?