What does this quote mean?

Question

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

Please be indepth.

Answer 1

Huxley's whole quote goes: "Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club."

It's an analogy, comparing two things to show that science is just common sense that has gone through time and training to be honed into a viable skill.

Answer 2

I think if you get too in depth, you get away from the meaning of the quote. When you get right down too it, the vast majority of science is just counting. They're counting results and using statistical methods to answer a simple question: "Is something happening?". For instance, if I saw a rabbit eat some watermelon and die, and formed a hypothesis that watermelons were poisonous to rabbits, I might form an experiment wherein I fed watermelon to a bunch of rabbits, counted neutral and harmful reactions, then, using statistics to determine significance, I would attempt to answer the question of how likely it was that watermelon is indeed poisonous to rabbits. This is a very simple example and ignores the complexity of most real world experiments and techniques, but to the trained scientists, for whom those things are also fairly simple and mundane, it's this process of doing something, counting, and deriving common sense explanations from data. The "trained and organized" part just makes sure that they're not tweaking their common sense conclusions to comply with their own preconceptions.

Answer 3

science is essentially an eventual accumulation of information and logically arrived at conclusions, which will identify a mystery or question before systematically eliminating options through well educated thought, conjecture and experimentation until the correct answer is discovered.

Most of the time, the questions can easily be answered with common sense and a good basic knowlage of the world and its workings

Answer 4

Science is knowledge based in fact that can be reproduced with the same results time after time. it is also based in proving or disproving theories and ideas and while common sense
is a useful attribute in science it is hardly the only factor in any scientific process.

Answer 5

being smart is being simple