Customer Reviews

Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science

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I found this book a paridigm shifter. It will permantly alter your thinking about the puzzle of why seemingly rational people will accept irrational attitudes. The author suggests that the rise of the "scientific method" was a (happy) historical accident that we owe to the greeks.

His experience as a physics teacher is used as an example of the difficulty in weening people away from subjective thinking. The central idea of this book is that objective thinking is a learned skill that does not come naturally to humans. While this may seem inherently pessimistic it seems to me more realistic than ignoring a major educational problem.

I was delighted with this wonderful book. The author gives an all around explanantion about the origins of science and its nature, pointing out the misconceptions that are distorting science education. A great book for the professional scientist that usually never has time to ponder how science is distinct from the intuitive creativity of common sense and the educated person that wants to understand this activity that permeates our society but is basically not understood.

Fascinating overview of intellectual development in human civilization. Cromer goes out on a limb with his remarks on the impossibility of exploring space, but he is right on target in his remarks on the abysmal state of American science education. With PC dumbing down education and people like Paul Feyerabend ridiculing the notion that science is of any use whatsoever, Cromer is a breath of fresh air.

Ever wonder why there seems to be so many people who do not use reasoning or logic? How come so many people hold contraditory concepts and somehow seem unbothered by the conflicting beliefs they hold? Well, this book helps to explain it in a historic and cultural examination. The book takes the reader through evolution to considerations about possible universe populations. It is a delightful book to quote and a joy to read again and again. You will like it.

I enjoyed this book very much. I takes us on a trip down the path of human intellectual development that begins before we were human, when we were apes, through prehistory, ancient history, and up to the present day. I strongly recommend the book. However, the author says some things that I think are extremely unlikely, such as his idea that if the Greeks had not made certain mathematical discoveries they would probably never have been made. He makes some scientific errors, such as his idea about the maximum speed of a space ship which I am almost
certain is incorrect. There are a number of other errors in the book, but it is still a great book. Don't believe everything you read in this book, but do read it and enjoy it. It will make you think.

This book is almost two decades old, first published in 1993, but its subject is as fresh today as it has always been, and its arguments as relevant and potent as you can hope to find in a good scientific text. A very readable book, the paperback light on the hand, the layout inviting, the notes, references and index comprehensive, and two appendices a pleasurable addition, it is very well written, and earns my highest recommendation. That scientific thinking is so different from common sense, that it began from debating as a way of finding truth, in the Greeks, the only ancient culture that could think scientifically, that it was almost lost for good - all those bits of history make one realise how precious a gift scientific thinking is, and how important it is to maintain an environment that allows science to flourish, not to mislead people with bunk. There is much this book shares with Lewis Wolpert's The Unnatural Nature of Science: Why Science Does Not Make (Common) Sense another excellent book.

Physicist Alan Cromer discusses how and why science is so different from the way people ordinarily view things. His view differs from much that is popular in philosophy of science precisely because he is a real scientist who actually experiences how scientific research is done and how scientific knowledge is assessed and applied in the real world of the working scientist. An important and well written classic of the subject.

I read this book when it originally came out and continue to agree with its central premise, that science truly understood cannot occur in a highly hierarchical society (e.g. China's, which while Chinese technology predated the West's by millennia, was not science and moved at a relatively glacial pace).

Readers of this book may consider the current sorry state of scientific research in the USA (and elsewhere). Today nearly all "science" is funded by government grants directly or indirectly, and if one buys Cromer's premise this argues that scientific progress should be giving way to statist orthodoxy and stasis. Whether it was a theist religion or today's modern theology of democracy, only projects that propose to reinforce current dogma are apt to be funded while those challenging the status quo go begging. For a perfect example of this search on the name "Peter Duesberg" or visit his website [...] Clearly the grant system is biased toward orthodoxy in ways probably not seen since the days of Copernicus and Galileo.

Dr. Cromer offers a valuable basis on which to form opinions as to scientific validity, a basis we all should cultivate as the line between science and public policy advocacy is blurred to the point of non-existence.

For more on how non-rational thought naturally dominates human social behavior (and a wealth of cascading implications thereof) consider then reading The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics

Professor Cromer makes the case for a particular type of thinking necessary in science. He claimed that only a small percentage of his students in his science classes could understand the abstract reasoning and critical thinking necessary to pass a rigorous science class. He laid the blame on not being introduced to science at an early enough age. He claimed that the early K12 teachers for the most part didn't understand science. In the last half of his book he offers prescriptions for correcting this situation. The book was written in the 90s and one can see the success of his book with the introduction of algebra on the high school exit exams. Also the success of Numbers on CBS fridays, which does for mathematics what he presribed for science. It is a very influencial book.

Read this book!

If you wish to debate the X File's fan - read the book. If you just want to ruin their most recent UFO siting you only need to read Ch 9 Are We Alone?

The simple mathematics presented will assure you that the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) was NOT Extraterrestrial!

Nearest Star with a slight chance of a planetary system - 6 light years ( 3.3 X10^13 miles).
Typical speed of a space ship (Apollo - 25000 mph | 7 mps) 10 miles per second.
Time in a sooped up Apollo space ship 100,000+ YEARS!

Think we could build a bit faster ship tomorrow - a resonable max speed of a rocket = 41 mps. See the end notes page 223 for ch 9 note 5. So divide 100000 yr by 4 and it is still too long 25,000 yr. by a factor of 1000!