In his essay on “Common Sense, Science and the Specialization of

Knowledge, ” Thomas Luckmann examines the relation between common sense and science. He proposes that a description of the respective structures of common sense knowledge and of scientific knowledge is useful because it will “provide some criteria for the assessment of common sense and science, clarifying at the same time their relation to one another” (1983, p. 59). Phenomenology is employed by Luckmann in order to show how common sense and science originate in human consciousness. Both types of knowledge are also to be considered from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge. By combining the descriptive perspective of phenomenology with the analytical and historical orientation of the sociology of knowledge, Luckmann sets the stage for an important question about the place of science in social life. He asks whether there still isn’t “much to learn about the limits set to the possibility and perhaps even desirability of infusing 195 science, distinctly a form of specialized knowledge, into common sense