Analysis Of The Four Idols

During the 17th century, there was a man named Francis Bacon and he did more for the theory of thought than any other person during that time. He created a paper called The Four Idols which outlined the essential creation of psychology and thought as it would pervade through the years. These idols would eventually give birth to many modern ideas such as semantics (the study of linguistics and logic as it applies to meaning). His idols would outline some of the fundamental thinking processes that are part of any person’s mentality. These idols also affected how the world would view themselves, with his ideas challenging many parts of the mainstream accepted ideas and ways of thinking. With this essay, he directly attacks areas of philosophy,

“There are four classes of idols which beset men’s minds.” In order to better discuss them, Bacon assigned each a title in order to clearly define that which has little definable boundaries. The first idol is the Idol of the Cave, which deals with the individual and how the develop during their life in their own person ‘cave.’ According to Manly P. Hall, the mind is symbolically a cave and this cave is moderated by the temperament, education, habit, environment, and accident that one man may come across in his life. A man then learns of a certain subject of science will develop a sort of obsession with it, unable to think of anything else. Hall says, “The chemist sees chemistry in all things.” Thus, once a person becomes obsessed, then they will continue to see the world through the view point of their obsession, potentially allowing for distortion of the way they perceive the world. The next idol is the Idol of the Tribe, which are beliefs that are essentially lies that are inherent in all men and are therefore belonging to all of human kind. They are kindred of exaggeration and distortion of the truth. Men are not content to simply record the natural world as it exists, but they feel the need to add things; details that simply do not exist. These imaginary details soon become intertwined with the truth and soon become one and the same. These ‘compounds’ become inseparable and this idol may explain why Bacon’s epitaph reads, “Let all compounds be dissolved.” This quote alludes to the fact that Bacon wishes that, in the future the ‘compounds’ can be sorted out once again so that the truth may be revealed among the lies. The next idol is the Idol of Theater, which is the hindrance of understanding due to sophistry and false learning. These stem from the areas of study that many of us take for granted: