
“Using, as an excuse, others’ failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 7
The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011)
Context: There is, however, a much more convincing argument that needs to be put on the table before we really begin turning common sense upside down. It is the overwhelming reason to prefer science to ordinary beliefs, common sense, and direct experience. Science is just common sense continually improving itself, rebuilding itself, until it is no longer recognizable as common sense. It is easy to miss this fact about science without studying a lot of history of science—and not the stories about science, but the succession of actual scientific theories and how common sense was both their mother and their midwife.
“Using, as an excuse, others’ failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 7
“Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself.”
The Shared Patio (2005)
Context: Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself. It is actually really hard to write something that will make a terminally ill person feel better. And Positive has rules, you can't just lift your guidance from the Bible or a book about Zen; they want original material. So far none of my submissions have gotten in, but I'm getting closer.
“Common sense is the very antipodes of science.”
Edward B. Titchener, Systematic Psychology: Prolegomena (1972), p. 48
“A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.”
How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)
Essays and reviews, Clive James On Television (1991)
“Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.”
Context: Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. They thrive on servility and shrink before independence. They feed upon worship as kings do upon flattery. That is why the cry of gods at all times is "Worship us or we perish."
Pamphlet The Devil, quoted in Gordon Stein An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (Prometheus Books, 1980), p. 258.
“Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense…”
The Fabric of Reality (1997)