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Unit 11: Of Revenge by Francis Bacon

3. The Idols of the Market Place. Notes
These are hindrances to clear thinking that arise, Bacon says, from the “intercourse and association
of men with each other.” The main culprit here is language, though not just common speech,
but also (and perhaps particularly) the special discourses, vocabularies, and jargons of various
academic communities and disciplines. He points out that “the idols imposed by words on the
understanding are of two kinds”: “they are either names of things that do not exist” (e.g., the
crystalline spheres of Aristotelian cosmology) or faulty, vague, or misleading names for things
that do exist (according to Bacon, abstract qualities and value terms – e.g., “moist,” “useful,”
etc. – can be a particular source of confusion).
4. The Idols of the Theatre.
Like the idols of the cave, those of the theatre are culturally acquired rather than innate. And
although the metaphor of a theatre suggests an artificial imitation of truth, as in drama or
fiction, Bacon makes it clear that these idols derive mainly from grand schemes or systems of
philosophy—and especially from three particular types of philosophy:
• Sophistical Philosophy – that is, philosophical systems based only on a few casually
observed instances (or on no experimental evidence at all) and thus constructed mainly
out of abstract argument and speculation. Bacon cites Scholasticism as a conspicuous
example.
• Empirical Philosophy – that is, a philosophical system ultimately based on a single key
insight (or on a very narrow base of research), which is then erected into a model or
paradigm to explain phenomena of all kinds. Bacon cites the example of William Gilbert,
whose experiments with the lodestone persuaded him that magnetism operated as the
hidden force behind virtually all earthly phenomena.
• Superstitious Philosophy – this is Bacon’s phrase for any system of thought that mixes
theology and philosophy. He cites Pythagoras and Plato as guilty of this practice, but
also points his finger at pious contemporary efforts, similar to those of Creationists
today, to found systems of natural philosophy on Genesis or the book of Job.

Induction

At the beginning of the Magna Instauratio and in Book II of the New Organon, Bacon introduces
his system of “true and perfect Induction,” which he proposes as the essential foundation of
scientific method and a necessary tool for the proper interpretation of nature. (This system
was to have been more fully explained and demonstrated in Part IV of the Instauratio in a
section titled “The Ladder of the Intellect,” but unfortunately the work never got beyond an
introduction.)
According to Bacon, his system differs not only from the deductive logic and mania for syllogisms
of the Schoolmen, but also from the classic induction of Aristotle and other logicians. As
Bacon explains it, classic induction proceeds “at once from . . . sense and particulars up to the
most general propositions” and then works backward (via deduction) to arrive at intermediate
propositions. Thus, for example, from a few observations one might conclude (via induction)
that “all new cars are shiny.” One would then be entitled to proceed backward from this
general axiom to deduce such middle-level axioms as “all new Lexuses are shiny,” “all new
Jeeps are shiny,” etc.—axioms that presumably would not need to be verified empirically
since their truth would be logically guaranteed as long as the original generalization (“all new
cars are shiny”) is true.
As Bacon rightly points out, one problem with this procedure is that if the general axioms
prove false, all the intermediate axioms may be false as well. All it takes is one contradictory

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