COMMON SENSE (aND SCIENCE ) 15 



covering a conception which comprises a joint understanding of both 

 the words and the things. 



Whatever the respective weights of the various normative factors 

 —biological, sociological, cultural, linguistic— together they are pow^- 

 erful in promoting common understanding of the concepts of com- 

 mon sense. Such understanding is then entirely compatible with the 

 individual creative intuition I hold requisite in all concept-formation. 



Varieties of concepts. The concepts of common sense are manifold. 

 Consider examples of three varieties we shall find strongly repre- 

 sented among the concepts of science. First are those which envision 

 as an element of identity an unchanging thing underlying, and pro- 

 ductive of, our changing percepts. Langer writes: 



A little reflection shows us that, since no experience occurs more 

 than once, so-called "repeated" experiences are really analogous oc- 

 currences, all fitting a form that was abstracted on the first occasion. 

 ... I believe . . . that we promptly and unconsciously abstract a 

 form from each sensory experience, and use this form to conceive 

 the experience as a whole, as a "thing." 



In common sense such thing-concepts have generally a quite direct 

 relation to the perceptions that evoke them; but the situation is not 

 uncomplicated. Surely the concept "mother" derives comparatively 

 directly from a set of visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli. But no 

 simple fusion of the sensory elements yields the concept "mother"; no 

 particular construct of mother quite corresponds to the concept 

 "mother." Observe also that the simple common-sense concepts al- 

 ready display a spectrum of unobservability continuous with the 

 much extended spectrum we remark in the thing-concepts of science. 

 Even "mother" is only intermittently present in the sensory field, and 

 the very young child may believe that "mother" is annihilated when 

 he sleeps and recreated by his cries on awakening; but he soon ac- 

 quires full belief in the unobserved, and for him unobservable, con- 

 tinuous existence of "mother." 



Consider now, as a second variety of common-sense concepts, 

 those class-concepts which group together things so much alike in 

 "important" qualities that we can ignore the respects in which they 

 differ. The whole possibility of learning from experience is tied up 

 with the development of a suitably discriminating group of classifi- 



