The New Atlantis Fallacies

The Idols, which Francis Bacon spoke of in the second half of his book, The New Atlantis, are false appearances. The Idols are discussed under the main subject called, The Advancement of Learning, which focused on how one in Bacon’s time could move forward with their learning and no longer be hindered by the methods of the old world. These methods being the three main fallacies that are held true, which Bacon lists as: sophistical fallacies, fallacies of interpretation, and false appearances or idols. They are the most concerning of all fallacies to Bacon, as he stated in the text that they are, “the deepest fallacies of the human mind: For they do not deceive in particulars, as the others do, by clouding and snaring the judgment; but by a

All of the Idols have some effect on the intellect, the cave misconstrues the thoughts because of personal attachments and the marketplace derives from miscommunication it is, however, the two remaining that strike the reader as having the greatest impact on one’s intellect, the Idols of the Tribe and of the Theatre. Idols of the Tribe is the root of all one’s false knowledge, it is not just an appearance, but how we interpret appearances, they are the falsehood that stem from concepts out of flawed human nature, Bacon describes our understanding as a “crooked mirror” one that distorts images, and so the things that one perceives from the external world are initially misunderstand causing a chain reaction of untruths to

Descartes hold the same concept of ideas and that nothing can be assumed as real or true, Descartes puts the concept even further than Bacon has in that he questions one’s very own existence, and challenges one to prove how anything can be real. To Descartes there are three types of ideas: innate ideas, adventitious ideas, and factitious ideas. While all are interesting, it is the innate ideas one must focus on as the direct relation to Bacon. The innate ideas are the underlying ideas of all others, one sees the already similarity to the Idols of the Tribe, as they are part of one’s own nature. The innate ideas are deeper than the senses, they are one’s capacities to understand and perceive as well as our tendencies, “…when we say that an idea is innate in us, we do not mean that it is always there before us. This would mean that no idea was innate. We simply mean that we have within ourselves the faculty of summoning up the idea.” The tendency aspect also rings of Bacon’s idols of the theatre, tendencies stem from either preconceived notions or ideas that we have built on and whose validity have never been thoroughly checked. However, the similarity may be there, but Descartes does not hold innate ideas to be untrue or a product of false idols. Innate ideas to Descartes are the only thing we have to go off of as thinking beings, and Descartes uses