The Four Idols of Francis Bacon

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Francis Bacon was one of the leading intellectuals in the courts of Elizabeth 1 and James 1 in England. He would provide the world with the modern scientific method. He would believe in heavy observation and experiment which led to scientific knowledge. Francis Bacon was not interested in scholasticism which had dominated the European education in universities at the time. These students of scholasticism would spend their time just pondering about works of Aristotle and making syllogistic arguments. They would not put much effort into observing the world around. This is, hence, that Francis Bacon writes his book, New Organon.

In the book, New Organon, Francis Bacon writes of the new scientific method which differs from the old method of Aristotle containing logic and syllogism. He wants to change from the deductive reasoning ideas of Aristotle to his new, inductive reasoning. In the book, he names four idols which can distort the thinkings of scientists who will likely use Bacon's method. These idols are tendencies and defects of mind that can prevent mind from developing a true understanding of nature. The four idols include

1. The idols of the tribe are innate tendencies that everyone shares. These usually contain the tendency of our senses to deceive us about what is really there, our inclination to wishful thinking, and our hasty generalizing tendencies before a careful investigative work has been done.


2. The idols of the cave are conceptions or doctrines which vary from person to person and are usually result of preconditioned system of every individual, comprising education, custom, or accidental or contingent experiences.


3. The idols of the marketplace are false conceptions which arise from interactions between men, usually through language. The tendency to use language too casually and imprecisely can cause problems in inductive reasoning.


4. The idols of the theatre are prejudices from received or traditional philosophical systems. The theories and dogmas by which we are already familiar with can possibly lead us away from investigating for the truth.

These are the four idols of Francis Bacon which can easily defect the thinking of scientist and even philosophers. Should one have a job which involves thinking and investigating, they should lose of these four idols stated by Francis Bacon.