I sing the praises of common sense. Like Quine, I see science as continuous with common sense. It goes beyond common sense, but does not discard it. Rather than overthrow common sense, science explains it. Common sense provides us with a grounding in the world. It is the foundation upon which scientific realism rests. As we will see, it even provides protection against the anti-realist scepticism...
For those curious the paper uses Arthur Eddington’s two tables metapher which is also nice to illustrate this:
I have settled down to the task of writing these lectures and have drawn up my chairs to my two tables. Two tables! … One of them has been familiar to me from earliest years. It is a commonplace object of that environment which I call the world … It has extension; it is comparatively permanent; it is coloured; above all it is substantial … Table No. 2 is my scientific table … My scientific table is mostly emptiness. Sparsely scattered in that emptiness are numerous electric charges rushing about with great speed … There is nothing substantial about my second table. It is nearly all empty space … my second scientific table is the only one which is really there whatever ‘there’ may be. (Arthur Eddington, 1933, pp. xi-xiv)
Note Eddington’s words: the “scientific table is the only one which is really there”. This suggests that the solid, “substantial” table of common sense does not in fact exist. Only the insubstantial, mostly empty “scientific table” is real. Thus, the example of
Eddington’s table appears to be a case in which science rejects common sense. The table of science is real. The table of common sense is an illusion.
There may well be a conflict between the scientific and commonsense description of the table. But Eddington’s contrast between two tables is misleading. There is only one table, the one revealed to us in commonsense experience. It may well be that the nature of the table is explained by science. Indeed, the scientific explanation of the solidity of the table may well displace the explanation provided by common sense. Nevertheless, Eddington’s “scientific table” is the very same table as the table presented
by common sense.
I find it entertaining that no matter how weird the deep scientific explanation is, that explanation can only be developed by scientists who have a naive sensory relationship with their instruments. They have to handle the instruments (or the computer controls) as though their hands and tools are made of solid stuff moving at easy-to-perceive speeds.
That did cause some problems with quantum physics, when they assumed that their measuring equipment along with the scientists themselves weren’t getting stuck in quantum superposition.
-- Science, Common Sense and Reality by Howard Sankey
For those curious the paper uses Arthur Eddington’s two tables metapher which is also nice to illustrate this:
I find it entertaining that no matter how weird the deep scientific explanation is, that explanation can only be developed by scientists who have a naive sensory relationship with their instruments. They have to handle the instruments (or the computer controls) as though their hands and tools are made of solid stuff moving at easy-to-perceive speeds.
That did cause some problems with quantum physics, when they assumed that their measuring equipment along with the scientists themselves weren’t getting stuck in quantum superposition.