Handy Tool - The Common Sense

"Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness" - Thomas Paine [Common Sense]

The termed coined by Thomas Paine is based on our realities and experiences. Let's have a look.

Common sense is an ordinary good sense or sound practical judgment. It is ordinary. It is not something excellent or super.

Common sense is nothing but all five senses meet to make judgment. It is very practical decision without any specialized knowledge, training or intelligence. In Henri-Frederic’s views, common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

Michael Dillon defined common sense as: "a rather uncommon ability to do the right thing without a lot of forethought; a close connection to deep intuition."

Although common sense is not very common, we can make out following features.

1. All possible outcomes of predictions of common sense are too vague.
2. It is not concerned with being consistent with existing knowledge.
3. It makes intuitively obvious, commonsense predictions.
4. It rarely focuses research on a problem.
5. It is wider and broader in scope.
6. It makes contradictory statements.
7. Key variables of common sense cannot be measured.

According to Daniel S. Levine (Explorations in Common Sense and Common Nonsense), "Common nonsense falls into one or more of a few repeating patterns. Some of our common nonsense beliefs can be characterized as promoting dominator relationships based on hierarchical rankings, as opposed to partnership relations based on equality and mutual respect. Others fall into a pattern of making false "either-or" distinctions (e.g., one can be socially responsible or pursue pleasure but not both). Still others result from confusing the average attributes of a group with the attributes of every individual in the group, or confusing the way someone acts most of the time with the way he or she acts all the time. Our common sense, creative responses to problems often come from seeing through appearances to the variability in each person or group. What you get is more than what you see!."

Science & Common sense

Logic is fundamentally a set of rules that we agree to use in our discussions. Science is proved. Common sense includes variety of experiences. Explaining a relation among logic, common sense and science with case study Jesse C. Vivian, Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice said "Logic and common sense do not need to leave the courtroom when science enters. We need to be more comfortable in accepting the limits of what we can know for certain. Science is supposed to be a tool that helps us to understand the way things are; it should not be a test or a goal in the workplace or the courtroom." To my understanding, common sense speaks language of social science.

Experiencing Common Sense

Henry Ward Beecher said, "The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next."

Our experiences play role in building common sense. We experiences circumstances and objects. Our experiences become outlook for common sense. Common sense is meaning shaped dynamically in diverse ways by forces of attraction and revulsion. Those who experience and understand life better likely to have proportionate common sense and familiarity to circumstances.

In Harriet Stowe’s words "Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done."

Common sense generates great feelings of accomplishment and happiness to certain extends. It keeps your feet on the ground of reality yet increase your heights by the brainpower. It fairly boosts up your confidence too.

Religion & Common Sense

We thank god for amazing creativity he gave to us. We praise him. We realize our sins and sufferings. We even realized the voice of soul that reaches to god or heard from god. This is our common sense.

Making It Uncommon

The learning and knowledge from infinite sources rapidly change our experiences. Even sometimes due to automation and digitalization, we forget our common senses too. The mathematics with memory was quite mind building exercise rather mathematics with calculator. This case is similar with our daily common life with most accepted common senses.

Time doesn’t stop. Since centuries we have learned a lot. With intuition we have discovered a lot. Following discovery, it becomes our common sense. To switch on fan or light is very common today. It was not the same case when electricity was not invented. The common sense is handy tool to live this life because every invention is done to ease life.