Professor Jacob
Honors 182
13 December 2013
The Four Idols Francis Bacons Philosophy on Human Understanding and
Empirical Induction
The discipline of science is in a constant state of change and
development, as our understanding of how the world works is altered by
new occurrences. Was this always the case? At one point in history,
Scholasticism was the only method used for study and scientific
development. The scholastic method involved reading the works
published by renowned authors of the past, and then analyzing this work
to better appreciate his theories. Essentially, scholasticism was merely
the rehashing of past knowledge and information; there was very little
generation of new knowledge or growth, especially in the field of science.
These are the conditions in which Sir Francis Bacon lived and worked
during his sixty-five year lifespan (1561-1626). Instead of falling in line
with scholasticism, Bacon championed a new idea called empiricism.
Empiricism is the idea that sensory experience should be the main source
of human ideas and knowledge. In Bacons opinion, scholasticism was not
the manner in which science and philosophy should be understood and
studied. Rather, as human beings we must experience life to grow in
2 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis and The Great Instauration, ed. Jerry
Weinberger (Wheeling: Crofts Classics, 1980)
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the truth. As seen in the quote from Bacon earlier in the paragraph, we
should give equal weight, if not more weight to the negative evidence.
Bacon goes on do describe more flaws of the human mind that he
classifies as idols of the tribe. Human thinking is too greatly affected by
passion, namely impatience, superstition, and pride. Bacon puts it
poetically stating, numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes
imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the
understanding.8 Bacon next mentions final causes, a major tenet in
Scholastic philosophy. Final causes are part of Aristotles philosophy;
specifically they are future conditions, entities, or events regarded as the
cause of the thing in question.9 Bacon disagrees, saying Matter rather
than forms should be the object of our attention, its configuration and
changes of configuration, and simple actions, and law of action or motion;
for forms are figments of the human mind.10 Here he is criticizing this
scholastic tradition for assigning reasons and purposes; he finds this trait
to be associated with the tribe because it is human tendency to assign
human nature to non-human things. For Bacon this is something that
needs to be changed because it is not allowing nature to interpret itself,
rather it is humans forcing their own ideas onto nature. However, in
Bacons opinion, the most heinous display of failed human understanding
is the dullness of our senses. He reasons that these prevent us from
8 Bacon, Novum, pg. 57
9 Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. s.v. biology, philosophy of
10 Bacon, Novum, pg. 58
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11 Ibid, 54.
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inactive.16 Bacon finds these idols the worst of all and blames them for
the stagnation of philosophy and science. When he speaks of
understanding of words and names, he is referring to the framing of
words and definitions constructed based on false understanding of nature,
particularly being the conception of the common people. 17 Hence, why he
calls these idols of the Marketplace, because they are influenced by
common misuse of language and description.
Bacon further breaks down the Idols of the Marketplace by
identifying two types of idols imposed in the understanding of by the
ordinary use of words. The first kinds are words that designate things that
quite frankly do not exist. This concept is in connection with the
Scholastic tradition of hylomorphism, which claims that the world is
composed of the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. 18 Bacons
skepticism of hylomophism stems from the lack of empirical evidence that
fire is truly a basic substance from which things are composed. Therefore
the expression element of fire would be an expression that designates
something non-existent. Yet, Bacon says that this type of marketplace idol
would be easier to expel because it is simply the result of a faulty theory
in natural philosophy. He says, it is only necessary that all theories
should be rejected and dismissed as obsolete19; which plays into his
16
17
18
19
Ibid.
Vickers, Articles, pg. 45
Ibid, pg. 48
Bacon, Novum, pg. 61
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concept of wiping out old theories and discovering new ones through
empirical means.
The second kind of marketplace idol is more easily dismissed
because it springs out of a faulty and unskillful abstraction, is intricate
and deeply rooted.20 These idols are the naming of things that seem to
exist, but are not defined well. According to Bacon, these words have no
clear meaning since they were defined too hastily without careful
observation of the entities they were set to define. To better explain this,
Bacon takes the word humid as an example of an Idol of the Marketplace.
During the time in which he lived, the word humid had no clear
application, when it was used it had two different senses. One of those
senses it could refer to a substance as humid, while if used in the other
sense the same substance could not be described as humid. This
therefore, convoluted the real meaning of the word and shows how it was
acceptable in his time to use terminology without having a clear
understanding of what it refers to. In Bacons opinion this is a great
obstruction to natural philosophy. How does he describe the manner in
which to remedy this horrible obstruction? In one passage Bacon relates:
Definitions cannot cure this evil in dealing with natural and
material things.; since the definitions themselves consist of words,
and those words beget others: so that it is necessary to recur to
individual instances, and those in due series and order; as I shall
20 Ibid.
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presently when I come to the method and scheme for the formation
of notions and axioms.21
From this passage we can see that the only way to help combat this type
of marketplace idol is through Bacons method of induction: building your
knowledge base from the ground up instead of in the Scholastic tradition.
The final category of idols that Bacon discusses is the Idols of the
Theatre. This group of adventitious idols consists of the false theories of
natural philosophy and science. Bacon describes them as play-books of
philosophical systems with perverted rules of demonstration. 22
Highlighting the idea that these idols come from experience in the world
and images that are forced upon us. Bacon further breaks down these
idols into three kinds of false systems: the Sophistical, the Empirical, and
the Superstitious.
The Sophistical system directly targeted the promulgation of
Aristotelian philosophy that dominated his day. The problem Bacon had
with Aristotelian learners and scientists was that they generally did not
base their beliefs and understandings on experience.23 Also, when they
did participate in experimentation they would take the results and make
them the general rule based on that one experience. This system
therefore is insufficiently based, if at all based, on experimental
observation. As Bacon put it, this Sophistical system is the most
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid, pg. 64.
23 Vickers, Articles, pg. 25
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and acting in its strife upon the smaller particles of bodies. 32 Once this is
done, then general laws can be stated based on these discoveries. Bacon
also takes note of the counter-examples; he does not avoid them like
traditional Scholastics.
There are two features in the method of induction that make it such
a revolutionary form of thinking. First, the extensive and detailed
empirical observation for the purposes of gathering information is
unprecedented. Before Bacon, there was no one who put such an
emphasis on the process of gathering data. Second, the conclusions
drawn from Bacons inductive method are not guaranteed to be correct.
This concept is in vast contrast to the Aristotelian deductive reasoning,
because they ignored it when what they hypothesized to be the
conclusion, did not match the evidence. Even though Bacons method was
not immune to error, it definitely proved a to be an important and
revolutionary step in the processes of the scientific world.
Sir Francis Bacon is famous for many contributions to the worlds of
science and philosophy. A true renaissance man, he experimented and
dabbled in many different areas of interest. In my opinion one of the
greatest contributions he made to the scientific world was this idea of
inductive reasoning. His inclusion of these Idols was merely icing on the
cake. Instead of just blatantly stating how wrong and ignorant it was to
approach the study of science in such an unscientific way, Bacon
32 Bacon, Novum, pg. 154.
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explained how the human mind up until that point essentially did not
know any other methods. He broke down the human brain into four areas
of flaw and explained how to overcome these. Even though the scientific
method is not an exact replica of Bacons methods, he definitely set the
blueprint for the modern one that is used today. The work of Bacon has
far reaching effects, which I would be hesitant to say he understood
during his time. Francis Bacon was revolutionary in his ideas and truly
rocked the science world into the future, long after his death. He
influenced progress and brought forth important changes in the scientific
method and in the process altered the course of scientific history.
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