PROBLEMS THINKING ACCURATELY

Francis Bacon and the Four Idols of the Mind Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) was among the Enlightenment founders. He was one of the earliest thinkers to truly understand the nature of the mind and how humanity truly progresses in collective knowledge. Hundreds of years before the advent of modern psychology, Bacon understood clearly that the human mind doesn't always reason correctly, and that any approach to scientific knowledge must start with that understanding. Bacon called the wide variety of errors in mental processing the Idols of the Mind. There were four idols: (1) Idols of the Tribe, (2) Idols of the Cave, (3) Idols of the Market place, and (4) Idols of the Theater. The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human natureitself. It makes the false assumption that our most natural and basic sense of things is the correct one. Bacon called our natural impressions a "false mirror" which distorts the true nature of things. In other words, the human mind can be like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. The Idols of the Cave are the problems of individuals, their passions and enthusiasms, their devotions and ideologies, all of which lead to misunderstandings of the true nature of things. In other words, besides errors common to human nature in general, everyone has a cave or den of his or her own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his or her own proper and peculiar nature; or to his or her education and conversation with othes; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he or she esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled, or the like. As observed by Heraclitus, people look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world. The Idols of the Market Place are formed by the communication, dealings, and associations of people with each other. The errors in thinking that this causes is primarily due to the force of words. Words tend to force and overrule the understanding and confuse people, which may lead them away into empty controversies and imaginings that may deviate from truth and reality. Lastly, the Idols of the Theater are errors thinking that enter people's minds from various dogmas and also from incorrect activities engaged by oneself or others. These errors in thinking are called Idols of the Theater because the thought-processes are formed by remembering so many stage-plays, representing words of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.