Nope. Common Sense Doesn’t Trump Evidence.

Photo: Rhett Allain. I didn’t want to include an image of “that guy”, so instead this shows the moon and Venus. This is actually important later.

In a terrible combination of dumb and mean, Donald Trump said that a collision between a helicopter and an airliner (that lead to the death of 67 people) was the result of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). When asked what evidence supports this claim, he said he has “common sense”. It’s true.

But here’s the deal. Common sense really only helps us figure things that we already know. It doesn’t help that much in the scientific process of discovering new things. Oh sure, Trump wasn’t considering a scientific model but rather a possible cause of a tragic event. However, scientific thinking is useful beyond the realms of protons and black holes. We can use it for everyday things too.

So, what’s wrong with common sense? All too often, we discover new things in the universe based on evidence that contradicts common sense. Let’s look at three examples of this in real science.

Aristotle vs. Newton (and Galileo) and the Nature of Motion

There was this guy, Aristotle. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He was also a big fan of common sense. He said something like this (but probably in Greek):

“If you push an object, it moves. If you stop pushing an object, it stops moving. Thus forces make things move. If there’s no force on an object, it will…