26 COMMON SENSE (aND SCIENCE ) 



sitions." Down-to-earth common sense with metaphysical presup- 

 positions? Of course, for as Morris Cohen observes: 



. . . the common sense level is not one of primitive metaphysical 

 innocence. The language of common sense is full of animistic, ancient, 

 and scholastic metaphysics; . . . 



In the infancy of science its presuppositions were perforce close kin 

 to those of common sense. Science was not born in the void. It began 

 somewhere, and with something. It set out from the position of com- 

 mon sense, and initially took for granted much that common sense 

 assumed. The commitment is not irreversible— scientific experimen- 

 tation began with crude workmen's tools, and these developed later 

 into more suitable equipment; scientific thinking began with the 

 modes of thought of common sense, and these too have under- 

 gone elaboration and modification. Even today, however, scientific 

 thought must set out from the position of contemporary common 

 sense. As Hebb suggests, 



... all learning tends to utilize and build on any earlier learning, 

 instead of replacing it (Mowrer, 1941), . . . the learning of the 

 mature animal owes its efficiency to the slow and inefficient learning 

 that has gone before, but may also be limited and canalized by it. 



The science we learn in maturity is necessarily based on, referred to, 

 and conditioned by the common sense we have learned and accepted 

 in childhood. 



Not all elements of experience are grist for the mills of either 

 science or common sense. Both seek a communicable knowledge use- 

 fully applicable by all. Both then come naturally to limit their sub- 

 ject matter to experience that is regular enough to give some promise 

 of a potentially predictable association of antecedents and conse- 

 quences; reproducible, or at the very least not infrequently recur- 

 rent; and overt, open to and shared in by all human beings. The 

 profound personal experiences that move us most— that we know best 

 —are not then data acceptable to either science or common sense. 

 They can be accepted only insofar as whatever seems irreducibly 

 spontaneous is rejected ( to meet the demand for regularity ) , what- 

 ever is absolutely unique is left out of account ( to meet the demand 

 for recurrence), and whatever is intrinsically "subjective" is omitted 

 ( to meet the demand for overtness ) . Whate\'er the consequences of 



