Human intelligence is a relative thing. Being an ignoramus and being an idiot are not the same thing, granted, because one is lack of knowledge and the other is inability to use knowledge. But wait, it is my contention that inability to use knowledge doesn't stem from something absolute, but from not knowing how to use the knowledge or what knowledge to use. How to use knowledge may seem to come from common sense, but, in my opinion, common sense is of no use in this respect because it excuses idiocy as something other than ignorance. One instance of the truth of this is the fact that division by zero is "defined" as "undefined" making the common sense conclusion that something that results in an attempted division by zero can't exist. What the truth is, is that we are basically ignorant of how to view division by zero because common sense makes us ignorant. Years ago in college, in a Calculus class, my professor said something that I did't quite understand at the time. He stated that when he first learned the concept of a limit, he had no real understanding of it. It wasn't until he had studied and used it for quite a while, years in fact, that he began to understand it. He didn't tell us what that understanding was. Suffice it to say, we can find the value of an expression that requires division by zero, or any other value that seems impossible to find because of some "common sense" contraint on the use of the independent variable, as those who have studied Calculus can tell you. In relation to that, it may be stated that this use of aggregate concepts is the basis for most of my philosophy of life.

Now what does that have to do with real life? The idea that for semi-educated people can use common sense in terms of knowing the truth is garbage. They think that they aren't ignorant because they have a little bit of knowledge, and they usually giving lip service to a version of "scientific method" that their, granted more knowledgable, but equally limited by the too-much-present common sense teachers indoctrinated them. In my experience, each case of someone trying to promote their views scientifically do so in ways different than anyone else, each having their own requirements for what method is "best". A bioligist, a physicist and a psychologist will each have their own requirement for what it means to use scientific method. I have heard people tell me that a mathematically proven physics theory is absolutely wrong because it doesn't fulfil the "scientific method" requirements that a psychologist would use. This is totally absurd. The reason that the psychologist doesn't use the precise methods that a mathemeatical physicist uses is because human behavior isn't as deterministic as what the physicist is studying. In other words, scientific method varies according to what is being studied. What is the scientific method that is best? The one that can model the particular subject the best.

Scientifically, the rigorous equation 2+2=4 is proven easily by layman and mathematician alike day in and day out. Empircally, the basic law of gravity, what goes up must come down, is proven daily and can be repeated simply by throwing something up in the air. Now comes the hard part... I hear that some physicists claim that it is mathematically true that a ball that will fall from a certain height to the ground has an equal probability of "falling" from the ground to the height it fell from, or something as equally "uncommonsensical" as that. I have a hard time believing that. I claim that the reason for this disbelief is because of my inability to apply the knowledge the way they do, I am relying too much on common sense, and the fact that I have never, ever seen it happen (or the empircal source from which my common sense springs) and not enough on changing my view to the paradigm that they are using (or aquiring the knowledge and use of knowledge that they are applying). Too much like the high school graduate who claims that he can't find a value just because it requires division by zero and his high school math teacher told him that was impossible. A person who has studied Calculus should have no problem finding such a value, however. To me, believing something or not believing something isn't the issue. Common sense means to discount things when you just don't have enough information to know the truth. As an aside here, when you hear people saying that they have seen a UFO, I believe them simply because by definition it IS UNIDENTIFIED!!! Whether what they saw is unidentified by everyone is a different story. When someone explains to them what it was then it is no long a UFO to them.

And so it goes... the universe is an infinite aggregrate that we discover a piece at a time in increasingly "simple" incremental models as we gather more and more data and discover ways to apply the knowledge derived from the data. Will we ever understand everything in its entirety? Do we need to as long as we are able to use what we know in ways that are to our benefit? Uh, what does your common sense tell you?