The Four Idols

of Francis Bacon
&
The New Instrument of Knowledge
In the Novum Organum (the new instrumentality for the acquisition of
knowledge) Francis Bacon classified the intellectual fallacies of his time under four
headings which he called idols. He distinguished them as idols of the Tribe, idols of
the Cave, idols of the Marketplace and idols of the Theater.
An idol is an image, in this case held in the mind, which receives veneration
but is without substance in itself. Bacon did not regard idols as symbols, but rather
as fixations. In this respect he anticipated modern psychology.
Idols of the Tribe are deceptive beliefs inherent in the mind of man, and
therefore belonging to the whole of the human race. They are abstractions in error
arising from common tendencies to exaggeration, distortion, and disproportion.
Thus men gazing at the stars perceive the order of the world, but are not content
merely to contemplate or record that which is seen. They extend their opinions,
investing the starry heavens with innumerable imaginary qualities. In a short time
these imaginings gain dignity and are mingled with the facts until the compounds
become inseparable. This may explain Bacon's epitaph which is said to be a
summary of his whole method. It reads, "Let all compounds be dissolved."
Idols of the Cave are those which arise within the mind of the individual.
This mind is symbolically a cavern. The thoughts of the individual roam about in this
dark cave and are variously modified by temperament, education, habit,
environment, and accident. Thus an individual who dedicates his mind to some
particular branch of learning becomes possessed by his own peculiar interest, and
interprets all other learning according to the colors of his own devotion. The
chemist sees chemistry in all things, and the courtier ever present at the rituals of
the court unduly emphasizes the significance of kings and princes.
(The title page of Bacon's New Atlantis (London 1626) is ornamented with a
curious design or printer's device. The winged figure of Father Time is shown lifting
a female figure from a dark cave. This represents truth resurrected from the cavern
of the intellect.)
Idols of the Marketplace are errors arising from the false significance
bestowed upon words, and in this classification Bacon anticipated the modern
science of semantics. According to him it is the popular belief that men form their
thoughts into words in order to communicate their opinions to others, but often
words arise as substitutes for thoughts and men think they have won an argument
because they have out talked their opponents. The constant impact of words
variously used without attention to their true meaning only in turn condition the

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understanding and breed fallacies. Words often betray their own purpose, obscuring
the very thoughts they are designed to express.
Idols of the Theater are those which are due to sophistry and false learning.
These idols are built up in the field of theology, philosophy, and science, and because
they are defended by learned groups are accepted without question by the masses.
When false philosophies have been cultivated and have attained a wide sphere of
dominion in the world of the intellect they are no longer questioned. False
superstructures are raised on false foundations, and in the end systems barren of
merit parade their grandeur on the stage of the world.
A careful reading of the Novum Organum will show. Bacon used the theater
with its curtain and its properties as a symbol of the world stage. It might even be
profitable to examine the Shakespearean plays with this viewpoint in mind.

*************
After summarizing the faults which distinguish the learning of his time,
Bacon offered his solution. To him true knowledge was the knowledge of causes. He
defined physics as the science of variable causes, and metaphysics as the science of
fixed causes. By this definition alone his position in the Platonic descent is clearly
revealed. Had he chosen Aristotle as his mentor the definition would have been
reversed.
It was Bacon's intention to gather into one monumental work his program
for the renewal of the sciences. This he called Instauratio Magna (the encyclopedia
of all knowledge), but unfortunately the project was never completed. He left
enough, however, so that other men could perfect the work.
The philosophy of Francis Bacon reflects not only the genius of his own mind
but the experiences which result from full and distinguished living. The very
diversity of his achievements contributed to the unity of his thinking. He realized
the importance of a balanced viewpoint, and he built his patterns by combining the
idealism of Plato with the practical method of Aristotle. From Plato he derived a
breadth of vision, and from Aristotle a depth of penetration. Like Socrates, he was an
exponent of utility, and like Diogenes a sworn enemy of sophistry. Knowledge was
not to be acquired merely for its own sake, which is learning, but for its use, which is
intelligence. The principal end of philosophy is to improve the state of man; the
merit of all learning is to be determined by its measure of usefulness.
Bacon believed that the first step was to make a comprehensive survey of
that which is known, as distinguished from that which is believed. This attitude he
seems to have borrowed from Paracelsus and shared with Descartes. Knowledge
may be gathered from the past through tradition. It may be accumulated and
augmented by observation, but it must be proved and established by
experimentation. No theory is important until it has been proved by method. Thus
Bacon set up the machinery of control which has since become almost the fetish of
science.

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 Upon the solid foundation of the known, trained minds can build toward
universal knowing, which is the end of the work. Knowledge alone can preserve and
perfect human life. In spite of his scientific approach, Bacon in no way discounted
the spiritual content in the world. Knowledge might arise from inspiration and the
internal illumination of the consciousness, but this illumination is not knowledge
until, through experimentation, the truth is physically established.

http://www.sirbacon.org/links/4idols.htm

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 Descartes: Starting with Doubt
For a more complete formal presentation of Descartes, we must turn to the
Meditationes de prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy) (1641), in
which Descartes offered to contemporary theologians his proofs of the existence of
god and the immortality of the human soul. This explicit concern for religious
matters does not reflect any loss of interest in pursuing the goals of science. By
sharply distinguishing mind from body, Descartes hoped to preserve a distinct
arena for the church while securing the freedom of scientists to
develop mechanistic accounts of physical phenomena. In this way, he supposed it
possible to satisfy the requirements of Christian doctrine, but discourage the
interference of the church in scientific matters and promote further observational
exploration of the material world.
The arrangement of this book follows the order of thoughts; that is, it traces
the epistemological progress an individual thinker might follow in establishing
knowledge at a level of perfect certainty. Thus, these are truly Meditations: we are
meant to put ourselves in the place of the first-person narrator, experiencing for
ourselves the benefits of the philosophical method.
The Method of Doubt
The basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt is to defeat skepticism on its own
ground. Begin by doubting the truth of everything—not only the evidence of the
senses and the more extravagant cultural presuppositions, but even the
fundamental process of reasoning itself. If any particular truth about the world can
survive this extreme skeptical challenge, then it must be truly indubitable and
therefore a perfectly certain foundation for knowledge. The First Meditation, then, is
an extended exercise in learning to doubt everything that I believe, considered at
three distinct levels:
1- Perceptual Illusion
First, Descartes noted that the testimony of the senses with respect to any particular
judgment about the external world may turn out to be mistaken. (Med. I) Things are
not always just as they seem at first glance (or at first hearing, etc.) to be. But then,
Descartes argues, it is prudent never wholly to trust in the truth of what we
perceive. In ordinary life, of course, we adjust for mistaken perceptions by reference
to correct perceptions. But since we cannot be sure at first which cases are veridical
and which are not, it is possible (if not always feasible) to doubt any particular bit of
apparent sensory knowledge.
2- The Dream Problem
Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of
all sensory perception. Since my most vivid dreams are internally indistinguishable
from waking experience, he argued, it is possible that everything I now "perceive" to
be part of the physical world outside me is in fact nothing more than a fanciful

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fabrication of my own imagination. On this supposition, it is possible to doubt that
any physical thing really exists, that there is an external world at all. (Med. I)
Severe as it is, this level of doubt is not utterly comprehensive, since the
truths of mathematics and the content of simple natures remain unaffected. Even if
there is no material world (and thus, even in my dreams) two plus three makes five
and red looks red to me. In order to doubt the veracity of such fundamental beliefs, I
must extend the method of doubting even more hyperbolically.
3- A Deceiving God
Finally, then, Descartes raises even more comprehensive doubts by inviting us to
consider a radical hypothesis derived from one of our most treasured traditional
beliefs. What if (as religion teaches) there is an omnipotent god, but that deity
devotes its full attention to deceiving me? (Med. I) The problem here is not merely
that I might be forced by god to believe what something which is in fact false.
Descartes means to raise the far more devastating possibility that whenever I
believe anything, even if it has always been true up until now, a truly omnipotent
deceiver could at that very moment choose to change the world so as to render my
belief false. On this supposition, it seems possible to doubt the truth of absolutely
anything I might come to believe.
Although the hypothesis of a deceiving god best serves the logical structure
of the Meditations as a whole, Descartes offered two alternative versions of the
hypothetical doubt for the benefit of those who might take offense at even a
counter-factual suggestion of impiety. It may seem more palatable to the devout to
consider the possibility that I systematically deceive myself or that there is some
evil demon who perpetually tortures me with my own error. The point in each case
is that it is possible for every belief I entertain to be false.
Remember that the point of the entire exercise is to out-do the skeptics at
their own game, to raise the broadest possible grounds for doubt, so that whatever
we come to believe in the face of such challenges will indeed be that which cannot
be doubted. It is worthwhile to pause here, wallowing in the depths of Cartesian
doubt at the end of the First Meditation, the better to appreciate the escape he offers
at the outset of Meditation Two.
I Am, I Exist
The Second Meditation begins with a review of the First. Remember that I am
committed to suspending judgment with respect to anything about which I can
conceive any doubt, and my doubts are extensive. I mistrust every report of my
senses, I regard the material world as nothing more than a dream, and I suppose
that an omnipotent god renders false each proposition that I am even inclined to
believe. Since everything therefore seems to be dubitable, does it follow that I can be
certain of nothing at all?
It does not. Descartes claimed that one thing emerges as true even under the
strict conditions imposed by the otherwise universal doubt: "I am, I exist" is
necessarily true whenever the thought occurs to me. (Med. II) This truth neither

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derives from sensory information nor depends upon the reality of an external world,
and I would have to exist even if I were systematically deceived. For even an
omnipotent god could not cause it to be true, at one and the same time, both that I
am deceived and that I do not exist. If I am deceived, then at least I am.
Although Descartes's reasoning here is best known in the Latin translation of
its expression in the Discourse, "cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"), it is not
merely an inference from the activity of thinking to the existence of an agent which
performs that activity. It is intended rather as an intuition of one's own reality, an
expression of the indubitability of first-person experience, the logical self-
certification of self-conscious awareness in any form.
Skepticism is thereby defeated, according to Descartes. No matter how many
skeptical challenges are raised—indeed, even if things are much worse than the
most extravagant skeptic ever claimed—there is at least one fragment of genuine
human knowledge: my perfect certainty of my own existence. From this starting-
point, Descartes supposed, it is possible to achieve indubitable knowledge of many
other propositions as well.
I Am a Thinking Thing
An initial consequence may be drawn directly from the intuitive certainty of
the cogito itself. If I know that I am, Descartes argued, I must also know what I am;
an understanding of my true nature must be contained implicitly in the content of
my awareness.
What then, is this "I" that doubts, that may be deceived, that thinks? Since I
became certain of my existence while entertaining serious doubts about sensory
information and the existence of a material world, none of the apparent features of
my human body can have been crucial for my understanding of myself. But all that is
left is my thought itself, so Descartes concluded that "sum res cogitans" ("I am a
thing that thinks"). (Med. II) In Descartes's terms, I am a substance whose
inseparable attribute (or entire essence) is thought, with all its modes: doubting,
willing, conceiving, believing, etc. What I really am is a mind [Lat. mens]
or soul [Lat. anima]. So completely am I identified with my conscious awareness,
Descartes claimed, that if I were to stop thinking altogether, it would follow that I no
longer existed at all. At this point, nothing else about human nature can be
determined with such perfect certainty.

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 Spinoza: God, Nature, and Freedom
Descartes regarded mathematical reasoning as the paradigm for progress in
human knowledge, but Baruch Spinoza took this rationalistic appreciation even
further, developing and expressing his mature philosophical views "in the
geometrical manner." Thus, in the posthumously-published Ethica Ordine
Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics) (1677), Spinoza claimed to deduce the entire
system of thought from a restricted set of definitions and self-evident axioms.
Drawing specific doctrines from Cartesian thought, medieval scholasticism,
and the Jewish tradition, Spinoza blended everything together into a comprehensive
vision of the universe as a coherent whole governed solely by the immutable laws of
logical necessity. Rigorous thought reveals that there can be only a single substance,
of which we (and everything else) are merely insignificant parts. Although we may
find it difficult to take any comfort in Spinoza's account of our place in the world, we
are bound to admire the logical consistency with which he works out all the details.

The Unity of Substance

The definitions and axioms with which Book I of the Ethics begins are critical
to Spinoza's enterprise, since they are intended to carry his central doctrines as
deductive consequences. Although they generally follow the usages of
the scholastic tradition, many of them also include special features of great
significance to the thought of Spinoza.
Substance, for example, he defined not only as existing in itself but also as
"conceived through itself." (I Def. iii) This places a severe limit on the possibility of
interaction between things, since Spinoza declared that causation is a relation of
logical necessity, such that knowledge of the effect requires knowledge of its cause.
(I Ax. iii-iv) Few will disagree that god is a substance with infinite attributes, but this
definition carries some surprising implications in Spinoza's view of the world;
notice also that freedom, according to Spinoza, just means that a thing exists and
acts by its own nature rather than by external compulsion. (I Def. vi-vii)
The numbered propositions that follow make it clear what Spinoza is getting
at. Since causal interaction is impossible between two substances that differ
essentially, and no two substances can share a common attribute or essence, it
follows that no substance can produce genuine change in any another substance.
Each must be the cause of its own existence and, since it cannot be subject to
limitations imposed from outside itself, must also be absolutely infinite. Things that
appear to be finite individuals interacting with each other, then, cannot themselves
be substances; in reality, they can be nothing more than the modifications of a self-
caused, infinite substance. (I Prop. v-viii) And that, of course, is god.
"Deus sive Natura"
Spinoza supposed it easy to demonstrate that such a being does really exist. As
the ontological argument makes clear, god's very essence includes existence.

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Moreover, nothing else could possibly prevent the existence of that substance which
has infinite attributes in itself. Finally, although it depends on a posteriori grounds
to which Spinoza would rather not appeal, the cosmological argument helps us to
understand that since we ourselves exist, so must an infinite cause of the universe.
Thus, god exists. (I Prop. xi)
What is more, god is a being with infinitely many attributes, each of which is
itself infinite, upon which no limits of any kind can be imposed. So Spinoza argued
that infinite substance must be indivisible, eternal, and unitary. There can be only
one such substance, "god or nature," in which everything else is wholly contained.
Thus, Spinoza is an extreme monist, for whom "Whatever is, is in god." Every mind
and everybody, every thought and every movement, all are nothing more than
aspects of the one true being. Thus, god is an extended as well as a thinking
substance.
Finally, god is perfectly free on Spinoza's definition. Of course it would be
incorrect to suppose that god has any choices about what to do. Everything that
happens is not only causally determined but actually flows by logical necessity from
immutable laws. But since everything is merely a part of god, those laws themselves,
and cause and effect alike, are simply aspects of the divine essence, which is wholly
self-contained and therefore free. (I Prop. xvii) Because there is no other substance,
god's actions can never be influenced by anything else.
Human Knowledge
Spinoza maintained that human beings do have particular faculties whose functions
are to provide some degree of knowledge. I typically assume, for example, that there
may be some correlation between thought and extension with regard to sensations
produced by the action of other bodies upon my eyes, ears, and fingertips. Even my
memory may occasionally harbor some evidence of the order and connection
common to things and ideas. And in self-conscious awareness, I seem to achieve
genuine knowledge of myself by representing my mind to itself, using ideas to
signify other ideas.
Near the end of Book II, then, Spinoza distinguished three kinds of
knowledge of which we may be capable: First, opinion, derived either from vague
sensory experience or from the signification of words in the memory or imagination,
provides only inadequate ideas and cannot be relied upon as a source of truth.
Second, reason, which begins with simple adequate ideas and by analyzing causal
or logical necessity proceeds toward awareness of their more general causes, does
provide us with truth. But intuition, in which the mind deduces the structure of
reality from the very essence or idea of god, is the great source of adequate ideas,
the highest form of knowledge, and the ultimate guarantor of truth. (II Prop. xl)
Spinoza therefore recommends a three-step process for the achievement of
human knowledge: First, disregard the misleading testimony of the senses and
conventional learning. Second, starting from the adequate idea of any one existing
thing, reason back to the eternal attribute of god from which it derives. Finally, use
this knowledge of the divine essence to intuit everything else that ever was, is, and

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will be. Indeed, he supposed that the Ethics itself is an exercise in this ultimate
pursuit of indubitable knowledge.
Action, Goodness, and Freedom
The last three Books of the Ethics collectively describe how to live consistently on
Spinozistic principles. All human behavior results from desire or the perception of
pain, so (like events of any sort) it flows necessarily from the eternal attributes of
thought and extension. But Spinoza pointed out a crucial distinction between two
kinds of cases: Sometimes I am wholly unaware of the causes that underlie what I do
and am simply overwhelmed by the strength of my momentary passions. But at
other times I have adequate knowledge of the motives for what I do and can engage
in deliberate action because I recognize my place within the grander scheme of
reality as a whole.
It is in this fashion that moral value enters Spinoza's system. Good (or evil)
just is what serves (or hinders) the long-term interests of life. Since my actions
invariably follow from emotion or desire, I always do what I believe to be the good,
which will truly be so if I have adequate ideas of everything involved. The greatest
good of human life, then, is to understand one's place in the structure of the
universe as a natural expression of the essence of god.
But how can we speak of moral responsibility when every human action is
determined with rigid necessity? Remember that, for Spinoza, freedom is self-
determination, so when I acquire adequate knowledge of the emotions and desires
that are the internal causes of all my actions, when I understand why I do what I do,
then I am truly free. Although I can neither change the way things are nor hope that
I will be rewarded, I must continue to live and act with the calm confidence that I am
a necessary component of an infinitely greater and more important whole. This way
of life may not be easy, Spinoza declared, "But all noble things are as difficult as they
are rare."

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