Between Scientific Logic and Common Sense: Thinking Without Reducing Complexity

A journey toward intellectual lucidity: why true wisdom does not lie in choosing between laboratory rigor and everyday intuition, but in the mastery of inhabiting their contradictions.

By Claudia Benítez

HoyLunes – In my previous article, I expressed the idea that normalcy, coherence, and human logic cannot be understood through a single, rigid pattern. Thinking is not the application of a universal formula; rather, it is inhabiting a complexity where experience, context, emotions, and cultural frameworks intervene.

From this premise, an uncomfortable question almost inevitably arises: what place does scientific logic occupy in this framework? And what value does so-called common sense hold against it?

For centuries, Western culture has placed both forms of thought at opposite poles. On one hand, scientific logic: formal, methodical, demanding, and seemingly cold and truthful. On the other, common sense: intuitive, everyday, practical, yet also suspected of imprecision and prejudice.

Scientific logic is not born in a vacuum. Before becoming a method, theory, or mathematical model, it springs from very basic human questions: Why does this happen? What will happen if…? What is the relationship between these facts? These questions do not sprout from an abstract laboratory, but from lived experience, daily wonder, and, in many cases, common sense itself.

Common sense, for its part, is not simply a collection of shared errors. It is a form of practical rationality that allows one to navigate the world without having to justify every step. It does not seek universal truth, but immediate viability: getting home, understanding another person, anticipating risks, coexisting. It operates with implicit rules, rapid generalizations, and a flexible logic that tolerates contradictions as long as they do not impede action.

The key difference is not so much that one “thinks” and the other does not, but rather what is demanded of them. Scientific logic is required to have internal coherence, explicit assumptions, and the possibility of refutation. Common sense is required to have everyday efficacy. When we confuse these planes, problems arise.

Common sense becomes dogmatic when it presents itself as unquestionable truth: “it has always been this way,” “it’s obvious,” “everyone knows that…” At that point, it ceases to be a practical tool and becomes a barrier to knowledge. Much of the historical resistance to scientific advances did not stem from a lack of intelligence, but from the absolutization of the common sense prevailing at the time.

But scientific logic also carries its own risk: that of disconnecting from the human experience that gives it meaning. When rigor transforms into empty technicality, when models explain but do not dialogue, and when language excludes instead of clarifying, science loses something essential. Not its validity, but its capacity to guide people in their concrete lives.

Thinking well does not consist of choosing between one or the other, but in knowing when to use each and recognizing their limits. Common sense can be a starting point, an initial intuition, an alarm that warns that something does not fit. Scientific logic can be the space where that intuition is put to the test, refined, or discarded. One completes the other.

From this perspective, coherence is not uniformity, but articulation. A person can reason scientifically at work and rely on common sense in their daily life without being incoherent.

What would be incoherent is to demand the rigor of an academic paper from daily life, or to make scientific decisions based solely on shared impressions.

Accepting this logical plurality is also a form of intellectual humility. It recognizes that human reason is not a single block, but a set of adaptive tools. Some seek truth, others meaning; some precision, others orientation. All are human, and all can fail.

Perhaps the true challenge is not deciding which logic is superior, but learning to think without reducing complexity, without despising the mundane or idealizing the formal. In a world increasingly saturated with data, experts, and opinions, this capacity to distinguish, combine, and reflect becomes a form of lucidity.

Thinking, after all, is not just about reaching correct conclusions, but about taking responsibility for the path traveled to reach them.