Abstract
Thomas Huxley, biologist, friend of Darwin and defender of and publicist for the theory of evolution, was a great popularizer of science. In a public lecture he defined science as follows: “Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense... its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differs from the manner in which a savage wields his club.”(1)
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Reference Notes
Thomas Henry Huxley, On the Educational Value of the Natural History of Science, 1854.
William Morris, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: American Heritage, 1969).
We have seen this remark attributed to Einstein, but have been unable to verify it or to identify another source.
R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).
John Z. Young, Doubt and Certainty in Science: A Biologist’s Reflections on the Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
Francis Bacon, The New Organon and Related Writings, ed. Fulton H. Anderson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960).
Morris R. Cohen and Ernest Nagel, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934).
Ernest Nagel, ed., John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of Scientific Method (New York: Hafner, 1950).
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze” in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), p. 25.
Suggested Reading
Gombrich, Ernst H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Gregory, R. L. Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.
Gregory, R. L., and Ernst H. Gombrich, eds. Illusion in Nature and Art. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973.
Harris, Errol E. Hypothesis and Perception: The Roots of Scientific Method. New York: Humanities Press, 1970.
Nash, Leonard K. The Nature of the Natural Sciences. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.
Scientific American. Image, Object, and Illusion: Readings from Scientific American. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1974.
Ziman, John M. Public Knowledge: An Essay Concerning the Social Dimension of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
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Goldstein, M., Goldstein, I. (1984). Facts. In: The Experience of Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0384-6_2
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