ABSTRACT
Science 'leads' and common sense 'follows'. Yet without common sense science could not have begun. Science must transcend common sense, yet common sense is the ultimate check on science. Each progresses in time when viewed from the standpoint of the other. Metaphysicians, Magicians, Theologians, Philosophers of Science, Psychologists, Anthropologists, Anthroposophists, Epistemologists, and many others, all offer methods of building paradigms of paradigms, systems of thoughts about thoughts, theories about how human beings use beliefs, sensations, reason and knowledge, to construct and maintain appearances of reality. The Baconian histories of heat, colour, wind, mining and so on, are filled with information, some of it recondite. But they juxtapose facts that will later prove revealing (e.g. heating by mixture) with others. Karl Popper has also damned this approach to paradigm building with memorable pejorative 'bucket theories of the mind'. A successful explanation is one which succeeds in subsuming the puzzling particular under a general proposition, or, to put it another way round.
