Common sense is anchor

We live, love, and learn by metaphor. ‘Common sense is anchor’ is, I am convinced, a useful metaphor for learning.

In what sense is common sense an anchor?

An anchor keeps us steady when we just want to lie on deck either sleeping or day-dreaming. It keeps us safely anchored in place. It is our security. If we put one out fore and aft we cannot move without a great force compelling us to move.

However, the anchor functions as security only in shallow water.

To go to sea, to explore, to discover the adventure of the deep water and distant shores one must ‘up anchor’, one must dislodge the anchor from solid ground and take a leap of faith, we must learn to develop confidence in our instincts and to navigate by the stars. It entails risk; but what form of action can we indulge our self in if we remain at anchor?

All of this is just to set the stage for stating my conviction that we must put on hold our common sense while we explore a new domain of knowledge. I am not talking about what happens in school where the teacher takes us by the hand and shows us charts and maps about other lands wherein we never leave anchor. I am talking about what we must do when our school days are over and we wish to find a new means to reach another intellectual domain.

We must place on hold our common sense while exploring new domains of knowledge until we have gained sufficient knowledge about these new domains to make good judgments. Of course, this requires that we do ‘due diligence’ when choosing our maps and charts before we set out. Seek out the best minds as your guide when entering a new domain of knowledge and then up anchor for a voyage of discovery.

Quantum Theory and Psychology are two examples of domains of knowledge that cannot possibly be explored while clutching a security blanket.

Do you think ‘common sense is anchor’ is a valid metaphor?

Have you ever explored a new domain of knowledge without a teacher at your side?

Common sense is essentially anti-intellectualism.

How do you reconcile these positions?

I agree that in our (US) culture probably well over 90% of the population have an anti-intellectual bias and thus I am asking them to place on hold that bias while exploring new domains of knowledge. I do not see the problem that you apparently see.

You say common sense is the anchor.

You also say that anti-intellectualism is bad.

But common sense is anti-intellectual. Common sense says "high falutin' books won't buy me dinner".

Ergo, you seem to be praising to contradictory things.

I think the point of that meandering OP was to advocate the study of subjects to which "common sense" is not applicable, FWIW. It would have been far more interesting, IMO, if he had taken all of the superfluous words and used them to make a case as to why that's important, rather than taking multiple paragraphs to say something that could have been expressed in a couple dozen words.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

You mean he could have used some common sense ?

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England has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only eternal interests - Palmerston

Clearly, you need to let go of your metaphorical anchor

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

It is a problem trying to satisfy everyone. Some say they cannot comprehend what I write and some say that I write what everyone knows.

Well, writing so that the majority of your audience can comprehend is probably the best start - I'd say worrying about stylistic impressiveness is decidedly secondary.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Alas, I suspect I would float away on sea of miscomprehension were I to do so.

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England has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only eternal interests - Palmerston

We commonly think of metaphor as something like analogy. We are trying to explain something to someone and we say this something new is very much like this other something you are familiar with. This is one form of metaphor but there is another metaphor that is automatic and unconscious. The child playing with objects has an experience of collecting objects in a pile. This experience results in a neurological network that we might identify as grouping. This neurological structure that contains some sort of logic related to this activity serves as a primary metaphor.

The child has various experiences resulting from playing with objects. These experiences result in mental spaces with neural structures that contain the logic resulting from the experience. When the child then begins to count perhaps on her fingers these mental spaces containing the experiences automatically map to a new mental space and become the logic and inference patterns to make it possible for the child to count because counting contains similar operations.

Primary metaphors are the contents of mental spaces developed in experience and the contents then pass to another mental space to become the bases for a new concept. The contents of space A is mapped to space B to then be the foundation for the new concept at space B. This mapping is automatic and unconscious.

lol...

and, with a three paragraph explanation of what a metaphor is, I've completely lost interest. Perhaps you could spend a few pages describing how addition works or what color grass is (and, while you're doing that, I'll be elsewhere, not reading it)?

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson