But how shall we learn science by mere common sense?
First. Always try to explain the unknown by the known. If you meet
something which you have not seen before, then think of the thing
most like it which you have seen before; and try if that which you
know explains the one will not explain the other also. Sometimes it
will; sometimes it will not. But if it will, no one has a right to
ask you to try any other explanation.
Suppose, for instance, that you found a dead bird on the top of a
cathedral tower, and were asked how you thought it had got there.
You would say, "Of course, it died up here." But if a friend said,
"Not so; it dropped from a balloon, or from the clouds;" and told you
the prettiest tale of how the bird came to so strange an end, you
would answer, "No, no; I must reason from what I know. I know that
birds haunt the cathedral tower; I know that birds die; and
therefore, let your story be as pretty as it may, my common sense
bids me take the simplest explanation, and say--it died here." In
saying that, you would be talking scientifically. You would have
made a fair and sufficient induction (as it is called) from the facts
about birds' habits and birds' deaths which you know.
But suppose that when you took the bird up you found that it was
neither a jackdaw, nor a sparrow nor a swallow, as you expected, but
a humming-bird.
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