Francis Bacon's Four Idols
Contents
The Four Idols
The Farnam Street blog article on them is quite good, with excerpts from Bacon's Novum Organum.
Idols of the Tribe. Misleading ideas inherent in the mind of man. Not understanding statistics. Not thinking logically.
Idols of the Cave. Misleading ideas in the mind of an individual due to his temperament, education, etc. Thinking like an economist (“maximize surplus”), or an epidemiologist (“save lives”), or an engineer (“make it strong”) or a modern American. Plato’s Republic’s Cave Allegory.
Idols of the Marketplace. Misleading ideas arising from thinking in terms of words instead of reality. Freedom of Speech, but if you disagree with it, you don’t think of it as Speech. “Essential services” during an epidemic.
Idols of the Theatre. Misleading ideas propounded by learned men and accepted by everyone else without question. The idea that bleeding cures illnesses.
Idols of the Tribe
Misleading ideas inherent in the mind of man. Not understanding statistics. Not thinking logically.
Idols of the Cave
Misleading ideas in the mind of an individual due to his temperament, education, etc. Thinking like an economist (“maximize surplus”), or an epidemiologist (“save lives”), or an engineer (“make it strong”) or a modern American. Plato’s Republic’s Cave Allegory.
Idols of the Marketplace
- Misleading ideas arising from thinking in terms of words instead of reality. Freedom of Speech, but if you disagree with it, you don’t think of it as Speech. “Essential services” during an epidemic.
- Political philosophy professors have a lot to learn from law-- in particular, the idea that if you look at specific examples,it really concentrates your thinking and brings out the real issues, piercing through the cloud of meaningless jargon that we academics tend to exhale. Actually, I guess we in economics could benefit from the same idea, though our exhalations tend to be mathematical.
- See Confucius on The Rectification of Names.
- See Orwell in his essay and in 1984 on using language to distort thought.
Idols of the Theatre
- Misleading ideas propounded by learned men and accepted by everyone else without question. The idea that bleeding cures illnesses.
- Think about the covid origin story-- that it couldn't have come from a lab.
