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Four Idols Response
I’m not ashamed to admit that I was entirely confused about the whole bit when I read his little introduction and more than a little timid as to my ability to absorb the thing at all without having to sit and stare at it for an hour, but, much like the Divina Commedia, it was a surprisingly easy read. But wait! The similarities to Dante don’t end there; Bacon’s fun little jabs at philosophers of his era are distinctly reminiscent of Dante writing about going on a journey through Hell and populating it with a bunch of people he knew.
The gist of this little gift from God is that everything we think we know is wrong because our ways of thinking are flawed by a bunch of different “idols” that Bacon divides into four separate categories-- Idols of the Tribe (stuff we do because we’re humans), Idols of the Cave (stuff we do personally because we’re all different but still stupid), Idols of the Marketplace (stuff resulting from misunderstanding because words are too vague to convey the real meanings of things), and Idols of the Theatre (stuff we think because some established person or philosophy has said it and of course they must be right, mustn’t they?). Bacon would prefer if we’d all drop the arbitrary classifications put on things, forget everything we ever learned, and just start all over from scratch in the pursuit of knowledge. It’s a pretty interesting idea, and I wouldn’t mind giving it a shot, but, as he didn’t mention specifically but I’m sure he was aware, people believe what they believe for a whole crudload of reasons, some of them not very good reasons, but once you really believe something you’re a little stuck with it. True beliefs are probably the most difficult thing to change about yourself or about others; this is something anyone knows who’s ever gotten into a philosophical or religious debate with… well, pretty much anyone. It doesn’t matter how good their refutation of Christianity or Judaism or whatever is; if you’re really a Christian or Jew (or whatever), there’s no way you would just stop believing in it because of that. To Bacon, that’s a bad thing (one of the Idols of the Tribe, specifically). It’s something I’ve thought about before, and I’m not sure if it doesn’t have its good aspects, too. Oh, well. We don’t have to think of anything as being inherently good or bad; Bacon looks down on that one too (since we tend to gravitate over to what we consider “good” and avoid thinking about negatives). Okay, this is too long. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
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