CHAPTER II 



Science (and Common Sense) 



PRELIMINARY survey of science 

 will now be made in terms suggested by its comparison with oiiv 

 reference standard, common sense. 



SOME "METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES" OF SCIENCE 



Science with "metaphysical principles"? But how else can I describe 

 general ideas that go far beyond the warranty of experience and 

 that are, nevertheless, stubbornly maintained even in tiie face of 

 apparently contradictory experience? 

 The real world. Born comments on 



. . . Man's need to believe in a real external world, independent of 

 him and permanent, and his ability to mistrust his sensations in order 

 to maintain this belief. 



The extraordinary success of the common sense (and the common- 

 sense language ) that consistently treats physical objects as possessing 

 "real existence" will not a little justify for the man in the street his 

 belief in reality. But, as Born further observes, 



The simple and unscientific man's belief in reality is fundamentally 

 the same as that of the scientist. 



The scientist's accreditation of the idea of a real world remains un- 

 shaken even by the rise of quantum mechanics. Bohr holds to be a 

 fundamental revision of our point of view the realization that: 



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