![]() But it can prove nothing about the natural world.īacon understood logical deduction, but like some proto-empiricists among the Scholastics (notably John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham), Bacon argued in his Novum Organum that knowledge of nature comes from studying nature, not from reasoning in the ivory tower.īacon likely did not believe certainty can result from inductive reasoning, but his great contribution was to see that (empirical) knowledge gives us power over nature, by discovering what he called the form nature, the real causes underlying events. This certain knowledge does indeed exist, within a system of thought such as logic or mathematics. Thomas Aquinas especially thought that certain knowledge can be built upon first principles, axioms, and deductive or logical reasoning. The "problem of induction" arises when we ask whether this form of reasoning can lead to apodeictic or "metaphysical" certainty about knowledge, as the Scholastics thought. This is simply the empirical method of collecting piece by piece the ( statistical) evidence to support a theory. ![]() Opposing his new idea to what he thought Aristotle's approach had been in his Organon (as misinterpreted by the medieval Scholastics), Bacon proposed that science builds up knowledge by the accumulation of data ( information), which is of course correct. ![]() There is no mistaking its religious import when Bacon contrasts "Idols of the human mind" with "ideas of the divine": in language evocative of Neoplatonic cosmology, Bacon implies that "ideas of the divine"-forms of nature conceived in the mind of God and left as traces or signatures of his divine authorship on "created things as we find them"-register as "idols" in the human mind, false appearances or distortions of perceived reality that falsely picture nature just as an idol falsely pictures deity.Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Pasco Rakic Lord Rayleigh Jürgen Renn Emil Roduner Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Tilman Sauerīiosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposiumįrancis Bacon described "genuine Induction" as the new method of science. (5)īut in the post-Reformation, iconoclastic context of late sixteenth-century England, "idol" is not a neutral term. (4) This persistence is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the tendency to regard Bacon's usage of the word "idol" as a form of metaphorical displacement from religious to secular discourse, which invariably represses its religious connotations: taken metaphorically, Bacon's idols have little or nothing to do with the Protestant critique of idolatry. Jones, voicing what was until recently a commonplace of Bacon scholarship, once argued that Bacon insists on an "emphatic separation of science and religion." (3) In spite of recent efforts to reconceive Bacon's view of science as formatively shaped by his religious context, an attenuated form of Jones's assertion persists in general histories of science and religion, in which Bacon still figures as a secular and secularizing force. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning (1605) (1)įrancis Bacon's Doctrine of Idols is one of the best known and most cited parts of his philosophy, but while thoughtful reflections on the terms "tribe," "cave," "marketplace," and "theater" populate academic literature, surprisingly little attention has been paid to Bacon's peculiar choice of the word "idol" (82-95). Only by avoiding the "idols " of scholastic philosophy, in the study of nature as in the study of scripture, Bacon argues, can we properly "inquirle]" into "divine truth."īUT as in the inquirie of the diuine truth, their pride enclined to leaue the Oracle of Gods word, and to vanish in the mixture of their own inuentions: so in the inquisition of Nature, they euer left the Oracle of Gods works, and adored the deceiuing and deformed Images, which the vnequall mirrour of their owne minds, or a few receiued Authors or principles, did represent vnto them. Bacon's "idols" of the mind are frequently cited, but discussion of the idols tends to focus on the metaphorical terms "tribe," "cave," "marketplace," and "theater." Less consideration has been given to his use of the term "idol." To understand his doctrine of idols requires that we contextualize Bacon's work within the history of early modern religious reform: just as Luther had argued for a reformed method of scriptural interpretation, so Bacon argues for a reformed method for the "Interpretation of Nature." Bacon's innovations in the study of nature-his theory of forms and method of induction-extend the project of reform to the study of nature through the logic of a longstanding metaphor connecting the Book of God's Word to the Book of his Works.
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