Definitions: (1) practical understanding or intelligence; (2) sound and prudent judgment
Derivation: Originally, commonsense was the faculty uniting and interpreting the impressions of the other five senses.
Sayings:
• Correlation does not imply causation. — Statistical axiom
• Best to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
• You cannot buy time, happiness, or virtues.
• A person can look before committing and therefore learn from looking as well as from leaping. An animal ordinarily learns only by leaping.
Quotes:
• Today’s commonsense is yesterday’s science. — Neils Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist
• Commonsense is instinct. Enough of it is genius. — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish playwright
• A walking encyclopedia will walk over a cliff, for all its knowledge of cliffs and the effects of gravity, unless it is designed in such a fashion that it can find the right bits of knowledge at the right times, so it can plan its engagements with the real world. — Daniel Dennett (1942 -) American philosopher