A couple of days ago I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times by John Horgan, entitled In Defense of Common Sense. Horgan is (in)famous for his announcement of “The End of Science”; now he rails against the fact that modern science is counterintuitive and violates common-sense.
“Scientists’ contempt for common sense has two unfortunate implications. One is that preposterousness, far from being a problem for a theory, is a measure of its profundity…” [Can Horgan really cite an example of this? I’ve never seen one outside the field of semiotics, which isn’t a science.] “The other, even more insidious implication is that only scientists are really qualified to judge the work of other scientists. Needless to say, I reject that position, and not only because I’m a science journalist (who majored in English). I have also found common sense — ordinary, nonspecialized knowledge and judgment — to be indispensable for judging scientists’ pronouncements, even, or especially, in the most esoteric fields.”
I found this kind of stuff offensive on several grounds. From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s nonsense – why should the set of cognitive skills that evolved in support of a hunter-gatherer existence be well adapted to the study of subatomic particles, DNA, or pulsars? From a sociological (and ultimately political) perspective, it suggests that scientific rigor and willingness to follow where the data leads should be trumped by a populist appeal to lay opinion; Lysenkoism and Kansas School Boards lie in that direction. Note his use of the word “contempt”: he clearly wants to suggest that scientists feel contempt for those who live by common-sense, i.e. non-scientists. That’s the kind of thing I’d expect from, say, Pat Buchanan.
In the latest issue of The Edge, Leonard Susskind from Stanford effectively exposes the flaws in Horgan’s piece. However rather than quoting from Susskind’s elegant essay, let me cite the whole of Daniel Gilbert‘s blunt refutation:
“Horgan’s Op-Ed piece is such a silly trifle that it doesn’t dignify serious response. The beauty of science is that it allows us to transcend our intuitions about the world, and it provides us with methods by which we can determine which of our intuitions are right and which are not. Common sense tells us that the earth is flat, that the sun moves around it, and that the people who know the least often speak the loudest. Horgan’s essay demonstrates that at least one of our common sense notions is true.”
That’s wonderful. The second sentence ought to be printed on the front page of every science textbook.
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