Victoria Ellis

Professor Jacob

Honors 182

13 December 2013

The Four Idols – Francis Bacon’s 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

Bacon’s 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 knowledge, it is not something innate. He championed empiricism by

developing a new model of reasoning, which he called induction. Why though did it take

so long for intellectuals to come up with this concept when it seems like something so

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simple? According to Bacon there are four ‘Idols of the Mind’ that prevent humans from

reaching their full potential on the quest for knowledge. What are those idols and how

do they stifle the growth of our minds? What did Bacon propose to overcome these

obstacles? This paper will discuss these questions and highlight the conception of

inductive reasoning.

Bacon’s idols are often misunderstood and perplexing to many students and

scholars of his work. Therefore, it is important to lay some groundwork regarding

Bacon’s philosophy before delving into a discussion of the individual idols. Many

scientists and philosophers of the mind believed the tabula rasa ideology of Aristotle

and Locke, which says human beings are born with a blank slate having no

preconceived notions or ideas. Bacon believed differently. According to him the mind is

not a blank slate at birth. Rather, it naturally has certain inclinations, prejudices, or

preconceptions that have to be recognized to be successful in natural philosophy. These

preconceptions are what make up the idols and in Bacon’s view they “are the deepest

fallacies of the human mind”1. Bacon’s idols are tendencies for the mind to

misunderstand and therefore become misguided on its search for knowledge. Bacon

goes so far as to say these idols deceive us in our thirst for truth “by [way of] a corrupt

and ill-ordered predisposition of mind, which…perverts and infects all the anticipations

of intellect”. 2 In his opinion these idols are a significant part of the natural realm and

need to be strictly guarded against. In one of his most famous works, The Novum

Organum, Bacon separates his four idols that plague the human mind into two separate

1 Francis Bacon, The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (London: Longman and Co. 1858) Vol. IV, pg. 431

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categories: adventitious and innate.2 The adventitious idols infect the mind because of

certain kinds of experiences. In Bacon’s words they “come into the mind from…the

doctrines and sects of philosophers, or from perverse rules of demonstration.3 In other

words, the idols in this category come from personal experiences and information that

we take in throughout our lives. As the name suggests, the innate idols are part of the

nature of intellect meaning that humans are born with certain psychological

susceptibilities that obstruct the successful pursuit of knowledge. The innate idols

oppose the idea of tabula rasa as discussed earlier. Below, a discussion on each of the

idols will begin.

The first idol Bacon reveals are Idols of the Tribe. These are innately occurring

intellectual tendencies that lead to the inference of false things. They are apart of the

fabric of the human mind and lead a person to have a distorted image of reality.3 In

other words, as humans, we naturally envision that everything will have a certain

standard, therefore we will assume that nature has more regularity and stability than it

actually possesses. This is such a common trait that Bacon calls this idol tribe because it

is something innate within the entire human race or tribe of men. They stem from the

mind’s tendency to “distort and discolor the nature of things by mingling its own nature

with it”.4 He says that human understanding is a “false mirror” in which the mind

projects its own desires on nature whether or not nature behaves how humans want it

2 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis and The Great Instauration, ed. Jerry Weinberger (Wheeling: Crofts Classics, 1980)3 Douglas Walton, “Francis Bacon: Human Bias and the Four Idols” Argumentation 13 no. 4 (1999): 3864 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, ed. Urbach and Gibson (Peru: Open Court Publishing, 1994)

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to. This idea is very different from the manner in which scientific theories and concepts

were usually discovered in Bacon’s time. Typically, the intellectuals already had an idea

of how they perceived nature to be and in order to prove their point they found

evidence that supported their theory. Rather than developing a theory based on the

evidence, they chose the evidence based on their theory. In Bacon’s opinion this is a

serious flaw when it comes to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

Bacon gives several examples of this idol at work in the common human

understanding of his time. He asserts, “human understanding is of its own nature prone

to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds”.5 As an

example of this, Bacon directly criticizes the Aristotelian cosmology that all celestial

bodies move in perfect circles. To him, this portrays the human tendency to view the

universe as more orderly and regular – a fitting example of the tribe idol at work in the

human mind. His point being that the mind simplifies things by imposing order where it

may not even exist. As mentioned earlier, Bacon also points out that the human mind

will adopt an opinion and ignore evidence that proves this opinion wrong. He says “it is

the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited

by affirmatives than by negatives, whereas rightly and properly it ought to give equal

weight to both”.6 He illustrates this point in a parable about a man taken to a temple

where he is shown a picture of all the men who escaped a shipwreck as a result of

saying vows the gods. The man was then asked whether he recognized the power of the

5 Bacon, Novum, pg. 566 Ibid, 58.

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gods, to which he asked, “Where are they painted that were drowned after their

vows?”7 The point being that those who showed him the picture were ignoring the

people who may have died in shipwreck, to avoid questioning their belief in the power

of the gods. Our minds have such a strong desire to be correct that they will ignore

evidence that goes against what it believes is 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 Aristotle’s 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 7 Laurence Carlin, Empiricists: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009) pg. 188 Bacon, Novum, pg. 579 Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. s.v. “biology, philosophy of”10 Bacon, Novum, pg. 58

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allowing nature to interpret itself, rather it is humans forcing their own ideas onto

nature. However, in Bacon’s opinion, the most heinous display of failed human

understanding is the dullness of our senses. He reasons that these prevent us from

perceiving the subtle inner workings of matter, because of this we are easily deceived

into accepting what appears to us at first sight. This is a serious flaw in the study of

science, because science requires in depth experimentation and examination. All of

these Idols of the Tribe represent the human tendency to project its own nature onto

the external world, in Bacon’s mind this idol is one of the reasons natural philosophy

remained stagnant for such a long period of time.

The next idols that Bacon describes are the Idols of the Cave. These idols are also

in the innate category, however they vary according to personal characteristics. This

differs from Idols of the Tribe because this idol manifests itself differently in different

people. As Bacon describes these are “idols of the individual man. For everyone has a

cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours the light.”11 So it is apparent that

even though this idol is innate, it is not the same for every person. The main point of

these idols are that people possess certain character traits that cause them to be

attracted to erroneous ways of viewing nature. Some character traits, when combined

with exposure to certain kinds of education and experiences with others will result in

their judgment of science and philosophy. This tribe causes the judgments to be formed

unreflectively because the tribe stops them from paying attention to nature’s actual

processes and causes the “discolour” of the light of nature.12

11 Ibid, 54.12 Carlin, Empiricists, pg. 57

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Bacon does not go into as much detail for these idols as he did for the Idols of the

Tribe, however he does include some examples to describe his statements. For instance,

he speaks of men becoming attached to “certain particular sciences and speculations”13

simply because they have labored under them and become used to them. Bacon

specifically mentions Aristotle as someone who made his philosophy a slave to his logic,

rather than making his logic a servant of philosophy. One scholar discusses how

Aristotle and the other practitioners of Scholasticism had a love for syllogistic logic and

they focused on this heavily; so much so that it determined the entire method they used

to pursue natural philosophy.14 Bacon also describes one more example of how this

tribe can manifest itself in a person. He claims that some will be inclined to have

extreme admiration of the ancient philosophes and their ways of thinking, while others

will be drawn to “an extreme love and appetite for novelty.”15 This idea is no doubt

reflective of Bacon’s criticisms of Scholasticism, because the main manner by which

scholastics studied was to look at the works of ancient writers and use those to

supposedly gain knowledge. Bacon asserts that this blind allegiance can distort one’s

understanding of nature; these allegiances must be avoided because it will rob the

intellect from even the smartest of intellectuals.

Bacon categorizes both Idols of the Tribe and Idols of the Cave as innate idols.

The main reason is because these cannot be avoided, as they are innate propensities of

the mind. All we can do is be aware of their existence and do our best not to fall prey to

13 Bacon, Novum, pg. 5914 Brian Vickers, Essential Articles for the Study of Francis Bacon (Hamden: Archon Books, 1968) pg. 107.15 Bacon, Novum, pg. 60

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them too frequently. The main difference between these two idols is that while Idols of

the Cave are innate, they are influenced by a person’s individual character traits and

manifest themselves differently based on those traits. Therefore, only some people are

prone to mark distinctions or resemblance of things in nature to the human experience.

Idols of the Tribe are similar in the minds of every human being, so we all tend to look

for more order in nature than is justified. This completes the discussion of the idols that

fall under the innate category, next are the adventitious idols.

Adventitious idols are ones that infect the mind due to experiences and

happenings in ones life. The first of these that Bacon discusses are Idols of the

Marketplace. According to him these idols are “the most troublesome of all…[they] have

crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names. For men

believe that their reason governs words; but it is also true that words react on the

understanding; and that it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical

and 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

16 Ibid.17 Vickers, Articles, pg. 45

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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 Bacon’s 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 obsolete”19; which plays into his 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

18 Ibid, pg. 4819 Bacon, Novum, pg. 6120 Ibid.

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his time to use terminology without having a clear understanding of what it refers to. In

Bacon’s 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 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 Bacon’s 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

21 Ibid. 22 Ibid, pg. 64.

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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 conspicuous example…who corrupted

natural philosophy by his logic.”24 Instead of being rooted in experiment, their

philosophies were fixed in syllogistic logic and abstract speculation. To clarify,

syllogistic logic is a very Aristotelian notion in which conclusions are drawn from

inferences based on two or more known premises. In another passage, Bacon links

Aristotle with the Scholastics, in connection with the employment of a false method of

learning:

“For [Aristotle] had come to his conclusion before; he did not consult experience,

as he should have done, in order to the framing of his decisions and axioms; but

having first determined the question according to his will, he then resorts to

experience, and bending her into conformity with his placets leads her about like

a captive in procession; so that even on this count he is more guilty than his

modern followers, the schoolmen, who have abandoned experience altogether.”25

“Schoolmen” is a mocking nickname of sorts that empiricists like Bacon use in reference

to the followers of Aristotle in his time period. In this quotation he links these men with

the promotion of false reasoning not based on experimentation; something Bacon finds

appalling. His main complaint in connection with the Sophistical false system of

23 Vickers, Articles, pg. 2524 Bacon, Novum, pg. 6425 Ibid, pg. 65.

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philosophy was the methodology used within them. He claims that Aristotle “bended”

his experiences to force conformation into his own established system. Rather than

letting the system reflect nature, he forced nature to reflect the system. Further, Bacon

criticizes the schoolmen by suggesting that their allegiance to Aristotelian logic is blind

and foolish.

The other two types of theatrical idols are the Empirical and Superstitious, and

the errors of these were different from the Sophistical. According to Bacon those in the

Empirical School of Philosophy did perform some experimentation diligently and

carefully, unlike Aristotle’s followers. However, these men took the results of these

experiments and applied them to a broad spectrum of situations, rather than just the

specific experiment. These broad generalizations, based on narrowly constructed

experiments were problematic for Bacon because in his opinion this would be faulty

logic. He uses William Gilbert, a philosopher, as an example of someone who made

broad generalizations based on narrow findings. Gilbert took his limited experiments

on magnetism and used them to formulate an entire system, hastily claiming that the

soul of the universe is magnetism.26 He exemplified the problem Bacon had with this

type of theatrical idol, in that you cannot make broad sweeping statements without

sufficient evidence to back your claims. The Superstitious school of philosophy

consisted of people who illegitimately mixed natural philosophy and theology in their

understanding of the world. In the discussion of final causes, Bacon cited Plato and his

followers as being guilty of this methodology. Bacon is so disgusted by this combination

26 Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. s.v. “William Gilbert”

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that he asserts “from this unwholesome mixture of things human and divine there

arises not only a fantastic philosophy but also a heretical religion.”27 For Bacon mixing

science and religion is utterly obscene and inappropriate. Thereby completing his

discussion of the three systems among Idols of the Theatre: Sophistical, Empirical, and

Superstitious.

As discussed earlier Bacon insisted the only means to overcome the idols was to

use inductive methods of knowledge acquisition. This means of learning is in stark

contrast with the method most common in Bacon’s day – that of deductive reasoning.

Bacon’s complaints about Aristotle and his followers’ methods were the lack of

experimental observation and the root in deductive reasoning. Similarly, Scholastic

syllogism was based on only a few experiences, rather than a significant amount that

would satisfy the needs of Bacon. Take for instance how Aristotelian followers would

reach a conclusion with the syllogistic method:

General Statement:

1. All objects are composed primarily of the earth element naturally descend.

From this general principle one could form deductive inferences, meaning from this

generality draw specific conclusions such as:

2. This book is composed primarily of the earth element.

3. Therefore, this book naturally descends.28

In other words, given that premises one and two are accurate then three must also be a

true statement. For Aristotelian scholars this concept is paradigm for scientific

27 Bacon, Novum, pg. 66.28 Carlin, Empiricists, pg. 24

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knowledge; if the general principle is true its vouches for the certainty in truth of

premise three. Bacon did not find this to be substantial for reaching scientific

conclusions. He found it suspicious that the general principles were not based on much

experimentation and that the terms, such as “earth element” were not clearly defined.

In many ways his Idols described the problems with Aristotelian methods of learning

about the world. Therefore, Bacon introduced his new method of induction to represent

the best approach for progress in physical sciences and philosophy.

Bacon firmly believed that his method of reasoning was far superior to the

deductive syllogism of Aristotle and his followers. His empiricism was firmly grounded

in experimental observation and allowed for the acceptance of new knowledge, which

inevitably leads to growth. Baconian induction requires the assembly of three tables

called the “Presentation of Instances”29 to find what part of nature correlates with

whatever is under investigation. Induction has the goal of finding specific forms of

things in nature and identification of the internal constitution of nature’s objects in

such a way that could explain all that object’s properties; this is different from

deduction because it does not leave holes in the understanding. To better explain this

we will look at Bacon’s investigation into the form of heat. Bacon used three tables:

Table of Essence and Presence, Table of Deviation, or Absence in Proximity, and the

Table of Degrees or Comparison in Heat. The first table was the list of instances

“agreeing with” heat; in other words cases in which heat was present. Bacon uses

examples such as sunrays, boiled or heated liquids, and fresh animal excrement.30 The

29 Bacon, Novum, pg. 145.30 Ibid, pg. 128.

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second list consists of instances in which heat is not present – obviously a much

lengthier list that could go on indefinitely. To keep the list a reasonable size he listed

things related to the first column; for example moon-rays as opposed to sunrays. The

third table contained examples in which heat occurred but in varying degrees. As

examples he listed substances that can become hotter than flame, such as iron, and the

heat experienced by animals when they exercise. These tables are supposed to increase

the possibility of being able to rule out certain properties not involved in the ultimate

form of heat.31 This ruling out is therefore the process of induction that Bacon believed

to be inextricably linked to empiricism. Once we have ruled out everything possible

based on the tables, a given hypothesis concerning, in this case heat, is confirmed. Only

after this arduous process can we put forward the true form of heat, which Bacon

defines as “a motion, expansive, restrained, 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 Bacon’s inductive method are not guaranteed to be correct.

This concept is in vast contrast to the Aristotelian deductive reasoning, because they

31 Carlin, Empiricists, pg. 26.32 Bacon, Novum, pg. 154.

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ignored it when what they hypothesized to be the conclusion, did not match the

evidence. Even though Bacon’s 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 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 Bacon’s 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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