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3 - Common sense in humanities and social sciences

from Part I - ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2016

Ivana Marková
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Summary

Bauer refers to three types of attitudes to common sense apparent in the articles published in the Journal Public Understanding of Science. These types summarise the issues discussed in this Chapter. One type is in the ‘tradition of debunking’ common sense. Common sense is ‘the place of superstitions, half-knowledge, complete and utter ignorance, misunderstanding and mumbo-jumbo, and virulent memes that give rise to antiscience’ (Bauer, 2009, p. 379). This type corresponds to the epistemological rupture between science and common sense. The second kind attempts to repair deluded or ignorant common sense and make it the ‘target of interventions’. Such contributions highlight public images and attempt to change people’s views in order to promote science and new technology, in particular among the young. This type appears to correspond to the idea of continuity between common sense and science and to the perspective of scientification of common sense. Finally, the third kind of attitude views common sense as a resource of knowledge; it is embedded in tradition and culture and it manifests itself in and through social representations enriching and innovating the understanding of social phenomena. This attitude is embodied in the theory of social representations and heterogeneous forms of knowledge.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Dialogical Mind
Common Sense and Ethics
, pp. 62 - 85
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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