Idols of the Mind
-
Upload
jorgerincon -
Category
Documents
-
view
265 -
download
0
Transcript of Idols of the Mind
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
1/16
British Society for the History of Science and Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The British Journal for the History of Science.
http://www.jstor.org
ritish Society for the History of Science
Francis Bacon's Concept of Objectivity and the Idols of the Mind
Author(s): Perez ZagorinSource: The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec., 2001), pp. 379-393Published by: on behalf ofCambridge University Press British Society for the History ofScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4028370Accessed: 23-02-2016 22:36 UTC
EFERENCESLinked references are available on JSTOR for this article:http://www.jstor.org/stable/4028370?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/publisher/cuphttp://www.jstor.org/publisher/bshshttp://www.jstor.org/publisher/bshshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4028370http://www.jstor.org/stable/4028370?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contentshttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4028370?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contentshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/4028370http://www.jstor.org/publisher/bshshttp://www.jstor.org/publisher/bshshttp://www.jstor.org/publisher/cuphttp://www.jstor.org/
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
2/16
BJHS,
2001, 34, 379-393
Francis Bacon's concept of objectivity and the
idols
of the mind
PEREZ
ZAGORIN*
Abstract.
This
paper
examines the
concept
of
objectivity
traceable
in
Francis Bacon's
natural
philosophy. After some historical
background
on this
concept,
it considers the
question
of
whether it is not an
anachronism
to attribute
such
a
concept
to
Bacon,
since the word
'objectivity'
is
a
later
coinage
and does not
appear anywhere
in his
writings.
The
essay gives
reasons for
answering
this
question
in the
negative,
and then criticizes the accounts
given
of
Bacon's
understanding
of
objectivity by
Lorraine Daston and
Julie
Robin
Solomon.
It
argues
that
this
understanding
is most
directly and
fully expressed
in his
discussion of
the
idols of the mind. In
this
connection,
the paper
notes
Bacon's
critical
attitude
to
sixteenth-century scepticism
and its
relevance to the
idea of
objectivity implicit
in
his comments
on
the idols.
In
conclusion,
the
paper
argues that Bacon
was
not a pure
empiricist
and describes the
place assigned
to
theories and
hypotheses
in
his natural
philosophy.
In
contemporary philosophical and
other discourse, the
term
'objectivity' is mainly used
with three
principal meanings
in
mind,
all of which
are
related
to one
another in
the sense
of
sharing family
resemblancesas described
by Wittgenstein
in
his well-known
remarks
on
meaning and language games.' As
commonly understood, objectivity can denote any one
of the
following: first,
the true
and
certain
knowledge of a
thing, property or state of
affairs;
second,
a method of
enquiry
designed
and
competent
to
elicit a true knowledge,
understanding or explanation of a
thing, property or state of affairs; third, a type of
judgement
or
mental
disposition
on
the
part
of
scientists, scholars, moralists, philosophers
and other
investigators
that sets
aside
prejudice, partiality
and
predetermined
answers in
the
process
of
any
kind of
enquiry
and the
appraisal
of
its
results.
All
three of these
definitions areamong those attributedto or implied by the word 'objective' and its cognate
term
'objectivity'
in
the
tenth,
1994 edition of
my
Merriam Webster's
Collegiate
Dictionary,
and
may
also
be found
among
the definitions
of
'objective'
in the
Shorter
Oxford
English Dictionary; although
framed to
my purpose,
they
also
correspond closely
to
the
several
meanings
of
objectivity
which
Allan
Megill
has summarized in
his useful
discussion
in
an
issue,
devoted
to the
question
of
objectivity,
of the
journal
Annals
of
Scholarship.2
While
thinking
and
language
are
obviously very closely
connected,
it
is
certainly possible
*
2990 Beaumont Farm Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22901, USA.
1
Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn., New York, 1970, nos. 66-7.
2 Allan Megill, 'Four senses of objectivity', Annals of
Scholarship (1991), 8, 301-20. Megill's
essay is the
introduction
to
a symposium
of
articles on objectivity
in
this
and
the
succeeding issues of Annals
of Scholarship
(1992), 9, nos. 1-2,
later published as Rethinking Objectivity (ed. Allan Megill), Durham, 1994.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
3/16
380 Perez Zagorin
to conceive of an idea without having one specific word
for it. In the Western intellectual
tradition, some of the ingredients presently constituting
the concept of objectivity long
antedated the time of Francis
Bacon and can be traced back to classical antiquity, despite
the fact that
in
neither Greek
nor Latin is there a particular word that designates this
concept. Terms like the Greek di'kaiosand the Latin aequum,
however, whose meanings
included fairness and lack of bias as well as what is right
or equitable, contained distinct
connotations that are clearly part of the semantic field pertaining
to our word 'objectivity'
and its uses
in
various contexts.
In
Greek philosophy
an awareness of what
might
be called
ontological objectivity as
the determination of the way things really are was implicit
in
the
speculations and enquiriesof some of the pre-Socratic
hinkers, Plato and Aristotle, which
aimed at
attaining
true
and
certain knowledge
of the necessaryand universal features
of
reality or the natural world. Aristotle's enquiry into the nature of being, for example,
which he pursued
in
his Metaphysics, and the theory and
logic
of
scientific explanation
outlined
in
his Posterior Analytics, which explains that
we possess 'scientific knowledge
when we ... know the cause on which the fact depends, as
the cause of that fact and of no
other
and, further,
that the fact could
not be other
than
it
is',3 presupposed
a
type
of
knowledge that is unconditioned, necessary, absolute
and, hence, entirely objective.
Similarly,
a
perception
of
at
least a
part
of what is involved
in
historical
objectivity
underlies the claim
of
Greek and
Roman historians to describe the facts and
explain
their
causes
truly
and
impartially.
Thucydides'
observations on the
method of
writing
history,
which he
placed
near the beginning
of his
History of
the
Peloponnesian War,
his comments
on the early history of Greece and his deep probing into the causes of the war between
Athens
and
Sparta, clearly
intimate or
envisage
the idea of a
self-consciously
critical
and
objective
historical
knowledge.4
A
consciousness
of
objectivity
is likewise evident
in
the
pledge of the Roman historian Tacitus
to relate the events of the EmperorAugustus' reign
without either
passion
or
partiality ('sine
ira et
studio');
and also
in his
denial that
his
political
elevation under the
emperors Vespasian,
Titus and Domitian had
impaired
his
impartiality as a historian who
held the truth to be inviolable.5
When we
pass
from the ancient world
to the
sixteenth
century
and Francis Bacon
(b.
1561),
we observe that the word
'objectivity'
does not
appear anywhere
in
his
writings,
since at that period
it did not
yet
exist
in
English
or
any
other
European language.
As
several scholars have
pointed
out,
its lexical
origin
is the non-classical Latin
adjective
'
objectivus',
which
medieval and
early
modern scholastic
philosophers
used in the
phrase
3 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 71b8-12, or Book I, Chapter
2.
4 Thucydides, History, 1.1-21. When Thucydides comes
to tell about the plague at Athens in the second year
of the war, he says he will leave
aside all speculation as to its origin but simply describe its
nature and symptoms;
History, 2.48. This statement, it is worth noting,
furnished the inspiration for the best known epitome
of the
principle of historical objectivity
in the nineteenth century as formulated n the famous comment
of Leopold von
Ranke that the task of history was not to judge the past
but to show what had actually
happened ('wie es
eigentlich gewesen'). Ranke's dictum is an almost direct quotation
from
Thucydides
and appears
in
the
Preface
to his own History of the Latin and Germanic Nations from 1494-1514, Leipzig, 1824, and also recurs in some
of his other
writings;
see the passages
from Ranke
reprinted
n
Fritz
Stern,
The Varieties of History, Cleveland,
1956, 57, 58, and for Ranke's
use of Thucydides' remark, see M. I. Finley, 'How it really
was', Ancient History
and
Models, London,
1985, 47-8, 116
n. 5.
5
Tacitus, Annals, 1.1;
idem, Histories,
1.1.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
4/16
Francis Bacon's concept of
objectivity 381
conceptus objectivus
to
signify
an
external
object
insofar as it is
present
to the
mind.6 Not
until about the
mid-nineteenthcentury
and after did the word
'objective'
enter
the
English
language with some of the
meanings
it
presentlypossesses,
while
'objectivity'
is even more
of a
latecomer to the
philosopher's
lexicon.7 This raises the
problem
of whether it is not
a
dangerous anachronism to
speak
of a
conception
of
objectivity
in
reference either to
Bacon or to any of the
philosophers or historians of
antiquity.
The short answer to this
question
is that
in
trying
to
understand and
analyse
the beliefs and ideas of
past
societies
and
cultures, historians and
philosophers
must not
only learn to
comprehend
the
language
and
concepts by which these societies and cultures
understood themselves and reflected
upon the
world,
but also
are often obliged to
apply
to them other
and later
concepts
of
which
they were
ignorant
or
only
partially
and
inadequately possessed.
Prior to the
emergence of the modern term 'objectivity' and its multiple semantic affiliations
constituting an entire
family
of
meanings,
it seems
to
be
undeniable that notions
approximating
some of
the
contemporary meanings
of
objectivity
are to be found in
Western
philosophy,
law and
historiography,
for
example.
If
there is a risk of
anachronism
in
talking of objectivity in
connection with Bacon or any
of his
philosophic predecessors,
the
same risk is
equally present when we
speak,
as
everyone
unavoidably does,
of
science
in
ancient
Greece or during the
Renaissance, since at neither period
was there any
word
or
idea
synonymous with all the meaningswe
have
in
mind
when we use the
word 'science'
today.
Indeed, historians of whatever field would find
their task
impossible
if
they were
barred from
using concepts and
terminology unknown to those
whom
they study.
In
such
cases of conceptual translation from the present to the past, I believe that historians and
philosophers
need not worry about
misleading readers by anachronism
provided they
take
care to
make the
necessary
semantic distinctions and to
remain clear
about what they
are
doing.
In
the case of
Bacon, while he was
ignorant of
objectivity as a distinctive
term, certain
aspects
of the
concept
were nevertheless
familiar to
him in
other
language.
Thus he
was
thoroughly
acquainted with objectivity
in
the sense of
impartiality
as one
of the
requirements
of
truth and justice
in
both
law and history, and
sought to
practise
it
himself
in
his activities as a judge,
a writer on
jurisprudence and a historian.8 An
awareness of
objectivity is no less implicit in his discussion of the affiliation between rhetoric and the
6 Scholastic
and neoscholastic
thinkers distinguishedthe
conceptus
objectivus
from
the
conceptus formalis,
which denoted an
object
that is
solely
in the
mind and thus has
only an intellectual
existence;
see the
excellent
discussion by Michael
Ayers, 'Ideas and
objective being',
in
The
Cambridge
History of
Seventeenth-Century
Philosophy (ed. Daniel
Garber and Michael
Ayers),
2
vols.,
Cambridge, 1998, ii,
Chapter 30, and the
remarks on
the
terminological
and
intellectual
ancestry
of the
modern idea of
objectivity
in
Peter
Dear,
'From
truth to
disinterestedness n
the seventeenth
century', Social Studies
of Science
(1992),22, 619-31; and Lorraine
Daston,
'Objectivity and
the escape from
perspective', in ibid.,
597-618.
7
See the discussion in
Daston, op.
cit.
(6).
The first
edition of the
Oxford English
Dictionary
had no
separate
entry
for
'objectivity'
and
cited
it
only in
connection with the definition of
'objective'. The
second edition lists
it separately with the following brief definition: 'The quality or character of being objective; external reality;
objectiveness.' It is
striking that there
is also no separate
entry for
'objectivity'
in
such
major works of reference
as the
Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, the
Dictionary of the
History of
Ideas,
the
Encyclopaedia
Britannica, the old
Encyclopedia of
the Social
Sciences and
its successor the International
Encyclopedia
of
the
Social Sciences.
8
I
have
discussed
Bacon's treatment of these
subjects
in
my book, Francis
Bacon,
Princeton,
1998,
187-220.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
5/16
382
Perez Zagorin
imagination
and of the latter's
role as an
instrumentof both
reason and passion.9 It is
also
a
prominent feature of the
political
reflections and comments on
worldly problems
and the
architecture of
fortune
contained
in
his
essays,
in
which his
mastery of
objectivity
in
the
decipherment of human
designs and
political
stratagems
is
akin to that of
Tacitus and
Machiavelli.' When he
observes
in
The
Advancement
of
Learning 'that we are much
beholden to
Machiaveland
others, that
write what men do and
not what they ought to
do',
he is praising the
Italian thinker for his
realism and objectivity
as an
analyst of political
conduct. But it
was
in
his natural
philosophy or
theory
of
science and the
investigation
of
nature that
Bacon
addressed the question
of objectivity as a
methodological problem
most
fully and
directly, and with an
originality that
went well
beyond
preceding
understandings
of the
concept. Students
of
Bacon's
thought,
however,
have
generally failed
to give his treatment of this subjectthe attention it
deserves.12
To this comment, though,
there are two
exceptions,
the first an
essay
by
Lorraine
Daston,
the second
a recent book
by Julie Robin
Solomon, each of which
attempts to
explain
the
Baconian view of
objectivity.'3
It
was Daston
who
first introduced the
question
of
objectivity
into
the discussion of
Bacon's natural
philosophy as a
part
of her
wide-ranging
project
of
investigating
the
history
and
evolution of the
principle
of
objectivity
in
the
natural sciences.'4
In
her
view,
his idea
of objectivity centred
on
the
new significance his
natural
philosophy
ascribed to
facts, independentof all theories or
interpretations,
as
the core of
knowledge.
'Seventeenth-
century objectivity', she
states,
'insofar as one can use the
word for this
period
without
anachronism, was about facts and
nothing
but the
facts'. 5
Taking
note of Bacon's
conviction that
natural
history
as collections of
particular
facts must
provide
the
indispensable basis of natural
philosophy,
she sees
in him
the
'pivotal
figure
in
the
rehabilitation of
facts as
knowledge'; 6
she
further observes that under
his influence
9
Zagorin, op. cit. (8),
180-1.
10
Zagorin, op. cit. (8), 133-46.
11 The Advancement of
Learning (ed. James Spedding, Robert L. Ellis, and
Douglas D. Heath), Works, 15
vols.,
Cambridge, MA, 1863, vi, 327.
12 The
present writer's recent
book,
Francis
Bacon,
touched on the
subject
only briefly
and
inadequately
(Zagorin, op. cit. (8), 82-6 ), and it has likewise been neglectedin the importantstudies by Peter Urbach, Francis
Bacon's
Philosophy of Science: An Account and a
Reappraisal, La Salle, IL, 1987, and Antonio
Perez-Ramos,
Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's
Knowledge Tradition, Oxford,
1988, the latter of which is
probably
the
most significant contribution in recent years to the
historical understanding of Bacon's theory of
science.
Objectivity
is also not
mentioned
in
any
of the
essays
in
The
Cambridge
Companion
to Bacon
(ed.
Markku
Peltonen), Cambridge, 1996.
13
Lorraine
Daston, 'Baconian
facts,
academic
civility,
and the
prehistory of
objectivity',
Annals
of
Scholarship (1991), 8, 337-63; Julie Robin Solomon,
Objectivity
in the
Making:
Francis
Bacon
and
the Politics
of
Inquiry, Baltimore,
1998.
Mary
Tiles and
Jim Tiles,
in their An
Introduction
to
Historical
Epistemology:
The
Authority of Knowledge,
Oxford, 1993, Chapter 2,
also include some comments on Bacon's idea of
objectivity,
but it is not
the focal
point
of their discussion.
14
Daston's other essays
in
this
project include 'Objectivity and the escape from
perspective' (op.
cit.
(6));
'Fear and loathing of the imagination in science', Daedalus (1998), 127, 73-95; and in collaboration with Peter
Galison,
'The
image
of
objectivity', Representations (1992) 40,
81-128. I
have also
had
the benefit of
seeing
Daston's unpublished
1993
article,
'The
moralized
objectivities
of
nineteenth-century
science'.
15 Daston, op. cit. (13), 338.
16 Daston, op.
cit.
(13), 345.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
6/16
Francis
Bacon's concept of objectivity 383
subsequent English
natural philosophers
like Robert
Boyle
believed
that
absence of bias
and
scientific impartiality depended
on the avoidance of
theories and
the concentration
upon
and
allegiance
to facts conceived
as sheer
theory-free empirical posits.'7
In this
way,
Daston holds, 'Baconian
facts' became
'the
premierobjects
of
objectivity'
and likewise
served to define
the
relationship
between
objectivity
and
impartiality
in later
seventeenth-
century
science.'8
In my summary of
Daston's essay, I have
not done
justice
to
some
of its
interesting and
suggestive comments. Its
analysis
of
Bacon's
conception
of
objectivity, however,
is
seriously incomplete and also unbalanced
in
the view it
presents
of Bacon's natural
philosophy.
While
it is true that
in
the latter he attached great significanceto the
collection
of facts, he is
mistakenly represented,as a number of scholars including the presentwriter
have shown, when pictured, as he is in Daston's story, as a pure empiricistwho equated
knowledge simply
with facts and left no room
for
theories
in
the
practice
of
science.'9
Moreover, although his emphasis
on
facts as a vital
part
of natural
philosophy may have
been an influential
aspect
of his
legacy
to the
succeeding generation of English natural
philosophers,
his
understanding
of
objectivity,
if
we are
willing
to attribute such a
concept
to
him,
included
a good deal more than this and was
considerably deeper
and more
interesting than Daston's discussion enables us to
realize.
Solomon's
book, which
is
premised
on the
assumption that objectivity has
been
overthrown as a norm of scientific
knowledge, defines it
as
'
self-distancing'
and
'disinterestedness'
or, more explicitly, 'the
holding
in
abeyance, or erasure,
of the
individual mind's desires, interests, assumptions, and intents while that mind is in the
process
of
knowing
the material world
*20
Claiming
to
show how 'class' and
'occupational
positions inflect the
production
of
culture and ideology', it maintains that Bacon's
version
of
objectivity
was an
ideological offspring of the commercial
and mercantilecapitalism of
the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries as the
socio-economic context for the
emergence of
the
strategies
of
self-distancingand objectivecalculation.2'
Unhappily, however, despite its
pretensions, this
work is unable to establish any actual connection between the
character
of Bacon's
philosophy and his supposed class
affiliation.22
Not
only does it fail to
provide
an
adequate
or
detailed examination of the writings that can be related to his
conception
17 Daston,
op. cit. (13), 345-56.
18
Daston,
op. cit. (13), 350,
356. For the importance
assigned to facts in
Bacon's natural
philosophy
and
its
influence upon
seventeenth-century science
in adopting norms
of impartiality and
fidelity to
facts as both a
methodological
necessity and an
essential part of
scientific discourse, see
Barbara
Shapiro, A Culture of
Fact,
Ithaca, 2000.
19 See
Urbach, op. cit.
(12), Chapters 2, 6
and passim;
Perez-Ramos, op. cit (12),
Chapter
18; Zagorin, op.
cit. (8),
Chapter 3.
20
Solomon, op. cit.
(13), pp. xi, xv,
xviii-xix.
21 Solomon,
op. cit. (13), p. xiii.
22
Solomon
is
mistaken in
identifying
Bacon with the
English
commercial bourgeoisie of the sixteenth
century.
Both his father Sir Nicholas Bacon and his uncle William Cecil, LordBurghley, were self-made men who rose to
wealth and high
position
in
the
service
of
the Tudor
monarchy, acquired
titles, country houses and
estates,
and
established themselves
as
members of the
Tudor aristocracy. Their
sons all belongedto
the aristocratic sector of
society. The interest
Bacon took in
commercial policy
and trade was typical of the
statesmen of his
period, who
looked upon
trade as an important
element of national
power.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
7/16
384
Perez
Zagorin
of objectivity,
but by equating
his understanding
of the
latter with
'philosophic
self-
distancing'23
t also
overlooks
new and major
aspects of the meaning of objectivity
which
are traceable in his theory of science.24
Bacon's foremost
goal as
a philosopher
was
the attainment
of a new logic
of discovery
in the investigation
of nature
that would greatly
enhance
human
cognitive power
and
assure the continual
progress
of the sciences
and the
growth
of knowledge.
His conception
of objectivity
is entirely
bound
up
with this
end. This
conception
is formulated
most
completely
in his
Novum
Organum
(The
New Organon),
published in
1620
as the second
part
of his Instauratio
Magna (The
Great
Instauration).
Never
finished but designed
to
consist of six
parts, The
Great
Instauration
was Bacon's
title for
the
most ambitious
project
of his intellectual
ife, his
plan for the
reconstruction
and
renewalof philosophy
and
the study of nature.25As a preamble to the exposition of his new logic of discovery based
on a reformed induction,
which occupies
the second
book
of The New
Organon,
he
devoted
the first book
to a critique
of preceding
philosophical
doctrines and
systems and
to
pointing
out the defects
of current
methods
of enquiry
and their
causes. The
entire
discussion
in the first book was
thus
intended
to expose the
various obstacles
that had
hitherto blocked the
progress
of mankind's
knowledge
of nature.
Bacon
regarded
his
prior
critique
as a therapeutic
necessity
which
would help
to
purge
the understanding
of his
readers
so that
it
would
be cleansed
and receptively
prepared
for the discussion
to follow,
a discussion centring
on induction
as a
discovery procedure.26
n his
survey
of the obstacles
to
the
growth
of
knowledge,
the
most
formidable
were those
he called
the idols
of the mind
(idola intellectus). It is in his analysis of these idols, rather than in the importance he
assigned
to the
accurate
compilation
of
facts,
that
we
find the
strongest
evidence
of
his
understanding
of objectivity
and
his most
distinctive
and
significant
contribution
to its
realization
in the
practice
of science.
It is
no doubt true
that as
encapsulated
in
the
familiar
phrase
'the
idols of the
mind',
Bacon
s
account
of
the idols
is
among
the
best-known
parts
of his
philosophy.
As a concept profoundly
relevant to
his view
of
objectivity,
however,
it
has been almost entirely
overlooked.
For this
reason
we are
obliged
to
re-examine
what
he
says
on
this
subject
in order
to see what
it
conveys
about
the
place
of
objectivity
in
his
natural philosophy.
In dealing with this matter, I think it may help
us to
perceive
what
Bacon was
trying
to
do
if
we
pause
for a moment
to notice
the
profound
difference
between
how the
question
of
objectivity
presents
itself
today
and
the
way
it
appeared
in Bacon's time.
Nowadays
objectivity
is a highly
contested
concept
in the
philosophy
and
sociology
of science and
other disciplines
and is
strongly
attacked
by
critics
who
deny
that it is either attainable
or
23 Solomon,
op. cit.
(13), p. xii.
24 See also
the critical
reviews
of Solomon's
book
by Brian
Vickers, Isis (1999),
90, 594-5;
and Robert
K.
Faulkner,
American
Historical
Review (1999),
104, 987-8. Among
its faults,
both
authors
note
its failure
to
analyse or clarify
Bacon's
theories
and its
questionable
arguments
ike
its
explanation
of Baconian
objectivity
as
an ideology and the creed of the rising bourgeoisie.
25
On The Great
Instauration
and its plan and character,
see
Zagorin, op.
cit.
(8),
73-7.
26 Francis
Bacon,
The
New
Organon,
Works, op. cit. (11),
viii,
99,
146-7,
or Book
I,
aphorisms
lxviii,
cxv.
The Latin
original
is
printed
in
ibid., p.
i. In further
references
I
cite
the English
translation
with
occasional
slight
changes.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
8/16
Francis Bacon's concept of
objectivity
385
necessary as a norm or
regulative principle
of
enquiry.
Most of these
critics,
whatever their
differences,
tend to share
a common
relativism about
knowledge
and
truth,
which
they
reduce to collective belief, disciplinary
and
community agreement
and conventions
of
language. Taking objectivity
to postulate
an impossible value-free,
neutral
or
aperspectival
position
in
the process
of knowing, they see it as
a
product
of
the illusion that scientific
knowledge is not a
human and social construction
but something simply
discovered and
21
true.
Opposed
to this
view are the numerous
philosophers
who
reject
epistemological
relativism and defend the principle of objectivity
as a
valid
cognitive
standard, guiding
ideal and essential requisiteof scientific and other
enquiry.28For them, objectivity entails
that truth is universal
rather than relative to social position
or cultural membership and,
moreover, that scientists and other investigators
are
sufficiently capable
of
transcending
their personaland cultural background,beliefs and prejudicesto arrive at valid knowledge
and
objective truth.29
The problem confronting
the idea of
objectivity
in
contemporarythought may
thus be
described as chiefly the consequence of some
version of relativism which serves as the
common ground for objectivity's
critics.
In
Bacon's time, however, relativism
in the several
forms it
has assumed
today was not available as a real philosophical option.
The sociology
of knowledge and theory of ideology did not
exist, the status of truth as an ideal and as
the
goal
of
knowledge remained largely unquestioned,
and the possibility
of
impartiality
in moral deliberation,the administration of law
and the writing of history was generally
not denied. Early modern
philosophers knew of course about some
of the relativistic
doctrines of the sophists which are reported in the dialogues of Plato, but these seem to
have
exerted little
influence.
In
his theory
of
science,
Bacon himself disagreed with the
dictum
of the
celebrated sophist Protagoras,
which Plato quoted
in
his Theaetetus, that
'man
is the measure of all
things', because
he held that
men need to
accommodate
their
thoughts
to
the measure of the universe rather
than
to
their
own
predilections.30
The
nearest resemblance to modern relativism
in Bacon's world was the philosophy of ancient
Academic and especially Pyrrhonian scepticism,
revived
in
the sixteenth
century, which
produced arguments
doubting
the
possibility
of certain
knowledge
and
truth. Scepticism of
27 The essays contained in RethinkingObjectivity (Megill, op. cit. (2)) provide a good sample of contemporary
criticisms of objectivity in science and other
disciplines;
see
among
others Kenneth
Gergen, 'The
mechanical self
and the rhetoric of
objectivity';
Lorraine
Code,
'Who cares?
The
poverty
of
objectivism
for moral
epistemology';
and Evelyn Fox Keller, 'The paradox of scientific
subjectivity'.
28 Among the philosophic opponents of epistemological relativism and defenders of
objectivity
are
Karl
Popper, 'The rationality of scientific
revolutions'
and
'The myth of the framework', in idem, The
Myth of The
Framework, London, 1994; Israel
Scheffler, Science and Subjectivity, 2nd edn., Indianapolis, 1982; Thomas
Nagel, The View from Nowhere, New York, 1986; idem,
The
Last Word, New York, 1997; Nicholas
Rescher,
Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal
Reason,
Notre
Dame, IN, 1997; Larry Laudan, Science and
Relativism, Chicago, 1990; Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science, New York, 1993;
Susan Haack,
Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, Chicago,
1998.
29 This last
statement must
be
qualified
n
the
case of
Popper's anti-relativism,
since he
always
maintained
that
it is impossible to know if a theory is true and that the measure of a scientific theory is not its truth but its ability
to
resist falsification.
30
Plato, Theaetetus,
160d;
Although
Bacon nowhere
mentions Protagoras,one
of
the essential themes of
his
natural philosophy, often stated in The New
Organon, is that
men must
adjust their thoughts to the measure of
the universe.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
9/16
386
Perez Zagorin
several types was an
important trend in early
modern philosophy
and its representatives
included such noted thinkers
as Montaigne, Charron,
Gassendi, Pascal and
Bayle, as
well
as many
lesser figures.31In Bacon's
case, though,
albeit he was a great doubter
and
questioner
of
particular
knowledge
claims, he neverattached
much weight to the challenge
of the sceptical philosophy
and always maintained
that knowledge
could be firmly
established and continually
enlarged. If he
had happened
to be acquainted
with
Montaigne's
sceptical
comment that what is true
on one side of the mountain
is false on
the
other,
he gave no indication
that he took this view
seriously.32
When discussing
scepticism, he mentioned
in particular he doctrine
of
akatalepsz'a,he inabilityof the
mind
to know anything, which
he explained had been
made into a dogma by the
later disciples
of Plato in the New Academy.33
He charged the sceptics
with making
'a cult of the
incomprehensibility of nature' and promoting 'a deliberate and artificial despair'
concerning the acquisition
of knowledge. What
later came to be termed epistemology,
the
branch of philosophy concerned
with whether and how
knowledge is possible, was not
for
him a
genuine
problem, and
he was not troubled by
the
deceptions
of the
senses
and
other
arguments sceptics
advanced as
reasons
against
the
attainability
of truth. He
was
convinced that all
the
impediments
to knowledge, including
those
due to the weakness
of
the senses, could
be overcome by the
intellect when supplied
with the
proper
helps
and
a
method
for
dealing
with the subtleties
of nature.34
What all
of this means is that
in his reflections
on what we now call
objectivity
Bacon
did not need
to
worry
about
providing
an answer
to relativism.
Instead he was
entirely
preoccupied
with the specific problems
he perceived
as hindrances to the advancementof
knowledge and
the implementation of objectivity
in
the sciences.
This is the principal
context
in
which his discussion
of the idols
of the mind should be read.
He
had previously
touched upon
the idols
in several
of his
earliest writings
and also given
them some attention
in The Advancement
of Learning,
published
in
1605,
his most
important philosophical
treatise
prior
to
The New
Organon.
In a comment
in the former work
on the
deficiency
of human
judgement,
he used
a
striking optical metaphor
to observe
that 'the
mind of man
is far
from the nature
of a clear and
equal glass,
wherein the beams
of
things
should
reflect
according
to their true
incidence; nay,
it is rather
like an enchanted
glass,
full
of
31
See the survey
by Charles Larmore,
'Scepticism', and the literature
there
cited,
in The
Cambridge
History
of Seventeenth-CenturyPhilosophy
(ed.
Daniel
Garberand Michael
Ayers),
2
vols., Cambridge,
1998, ii,
Chapter
32, and
Stephen Gaukroger's
discussion of
ancient and
sixteenth-century
scepticism and relativism
in Descartes:
An Inellectual
Biography,Oxford,
1995, 311-16.
32
Bacon had read
some of
Montaigne's Essais.
The observation mentioned
in the text comes
from
his
Apologie de Raimond
Sebond, Essais,
Book II, 12, a classic argument
and collection
of examples intended
to prove
that
the human
mind can know nothing with
certainty.
33
Bacon, op. cit. (26),
viii, 98, or Book
I, aphorism lxvii. See
also the
notes on akataleps:'a
n Thomas Fowler's
edition
of Novum Organum,
2nd edn., Oxford, 1889, 210-12,
254-5.
34 See Francis Bacon,
The Refutation of
Philosophies (Redargutio
Philosophiarum),
printed
in Benjamin
Farrington, The Philosophy of FrancisBacon, Liverpool, 1964, 127; Francis Bacon, Thoughts and Conclusions
(Cogitata
et Visa),
printedin ibid.,
88-9; The Great Instauration,
Plan
of the work',
Works,viii, 43-4;
the Latin
original
is printed
in
ibid.,
i. The
New
Organon
includes
a critical reference
to the Greek sceptic Pyrrho
and his
followers and
a number of
criticisms
of
scepticism; ibid., viii,
75-6, 98, 158,
or Book I, aphorisms xxxvii,
lxvii,
cxxvi.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
10/16
Francis
Bacon's
concept of
objectivity 387
superstition and
imposture,
if
it be not
delivered and
reduced'.3
In
another
equally
compelling
image
from
the
preface
to The
Great
Instauration,
he
declared that 'the
universe
to
the
eye
of
the human
understanding is framed
like
a
labyrinth,
presenting
as
it does
on every side
so many
ambiguities of
way, such deceitful
resemblances of
objects
and
signs, natures so
irregular
n
their
lines,
and
so knotted and
entangled.36
One of his
greatest hopes,
accordingly,
was to rescue
the mind from its
superstitions and
impostures
so
that it
could
explore and
conquer nature's
labyrinth.His
introduction
of
the
idols was
related
to this purpose.
A
word
anglicized
from
the
Greek ei'dolon and the
Latin
idolum,
the idols
Bacon
scrutinized did
not refer
to false gods
that are
worshipped,
but to
phantoms, false
appearances,
fictions,
delusive images,
illusions,
prejudices, fallacies and
false notions.
In
their impact on thought, some of the idols were the result of external influences, while
others
sprang from certain
innate
propensities of the
human mind. Their
importance
lay
in the
fact that
their effect
extended far
beyond particular
mistakes to the entire
warping
and misdirectionof
the
intelligence.
By identifying them and
their
operation,
Bacon
sought
to
uncover the
deep-seated and often
unconscious
sources of
misconception,
irrationality
and
error that barred the
way
to
a true
understandingof
nature. He found
a
comparison
to them in
Aristotle's
De
Sophisticis Elenchis or
Sophistical
Refutations,
noting that
'the
doctrine
of the
idols
is
to the
interpretation
of
nature what the
doctrine of
the
refutation
of
sophisms
is to
common
logic'.3
While Aristotle's
treatise,
however, was
concerned with
the
description of
logical fallacies
or
sophisms, Bacon's
examination of
the idols
ranged
more widely in order to identify the mental, psychological and socially
engendered
dispositions
and
beliefs
that were
responsible for
systematic
distortion and error.
Bacon divided
the idols
of the mind
into four
categories. The
first,
the
idols of the
tribe
('idola
tribus'),
were rooted in
human
nature and hence
common
to mankind.
These were
the
errors
to which
human
beings
were innately
prone, and
caused men to
look on
the
universe
as
if
it
were formed
according
to
their own
measure and
by analogy to themselves.
Among
the
consequences Bacon
attributed to
the idols of
the tribe
were the
mind's
assumption
of
greater order and
regularity
in
the world
than
is
actually the
case; its
perception
of
fictitious
analogies
and
parallelsfor
phenomena
in
nature;
its
tendency, after
adopting an opinion, to maintain it with the aid of continual rationalizations despite the
existence of
countervailing
evidence, a practice
to which
was due all
the
superstition in
astrology,
dreams,
omens
and
impressionsof
divine
judgments; its attraction
to positive
rather than
negative
instances, even
though the
latter are
the stronger
force in the
establishment of
true
axioms;
and its
disposition to
fall back
on final
causes as
explanations,
a
practice that defiled
philosophy and
accorded
more with
human nature
35 Francis
Bacon, The
Advancement of
Learning,
Works, vi, 276.
The word
'reduced' in this
context means
'corrected'
and is
related to
the Latin term
'reductio'
in
Bacon's preface to
Novum
Organum, ibid., i,
234, on
which
see also the
editor's note,
ibid.
36
Francis
Bacon, The Great
Instauration,
Works, viii, 32. In
the plan of The
Great
Instauration,
after
stressing
the necessity of 'keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature' so as to receive their images 'simply as
they are', he made the
comment,
'For
God forbid
that we should
give out a
dream of our
own
imagination for
a
pattern of
the
world'; ibid.,
'Plan of the
work', 53.
37
Bacon,
op. cit. (26),
76, or
Book I,
aphorism xl. Bacon
also speaks of
Aristotle's
Sophistical
Refutations in
connection
with the idols
of the mind
in The
Advancement of
Learning,ibid., vi,
274-5.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
11/16
388 Perez Zagorin
than with the nature
of the universe. All these errors, Bacon believed, were traceable to the
inveterate anthropocentrism
with which human beings projected
onto nature and the
world the patterns of their own instinctual
thinking. His analysis went further still,
however,
in
observing that the human
understanding, far from being a 'dry light', was
strongly affected by
the will and passions. Hence there come into
being what he termed
'wishful sciences'
('ad quod vult scientias'), because 'what man
wishes were true he more
readily believes' ('quod
enim mavult homo verum esse, id potius
credit').38
Yet another
effect of these same idols was the intellect's
inclination to reify abstractions by attributing
substance and reality to things
in
flux. But
of the
many aberrations
they produced,
the
greatest of all, he
considered, were the incompetence and deceptions
of the senses, which
were weak and erring
when
left
to
themselves.
Owing to their weakness, many things
in
nature remained unobserved; in this connection Bacon maintained that a truer
interpretation of
nature could be achieved by appropriate experiments,
since
in
these the
senses judged only the experiment
while it was the latter that decided the point of
nature
in
respect
to
things
themselves.39
The
second category
of
the idols, those of
the
cave ('idola
specus'), were errors
due
to
the
peculiarities
and variety of impressions
of each
particular
individual, every
one of
whom dwelt
in his
own
cave,
which refractedand distorted
the
light
of
nature.
Under their
influence,
men became attached to
particular
sciences
and
speculations
in
obedience
to
their
fancies.
Thus Aristotle
enslaved the
study
of nature
to the
syllogism
and the
alchemists based
their
philosophy
on a few
experiments.
Some
minds
noticed
differences,
others looked for analogies; some venerated antiquity, others loved novelty - attitudes
equally injurious
to
science.
As an antidote to the idols
of the
cave,
Bacon
proposed
that
students
of
nature
follow the rule that whenever
their minds seized
upon something
with
special satisfaction, they
should
consider it
suspect
and take
special
care
to
keep
their
minds balanced
and clear.40
The most troublesome of the idols,
according to Bacon,
were
the ones in the third
category,
the idols of the
marketplace ('idola fori'),
which
stemmed from the
deceits
of
language. Although people supposed
that reason
governs words,
the
opposite
was also
true,
that
words
govern
reason
and
give
rise
to
innumerable
empty
controversies and
fictions. As a result learnedmen have disputed merelyabout words and names, an evil that
not even definitions could
cure,
since
they
themselves were words and
begat
more words.
These idols also
misled
the
understanding
in
two
ways: they gave confused,
ill-defined
names to
things
that
exist,
and
they gave
names
to unreal
things
like
Fortune,
Prime
Mover,
Orbits of
the
Planets
('PlanetarumOrbes'),41
Element of
Fire and
other fictions that
owed
their
origin
to
false
and
idle theories
('quae
a
vanis
et
falsis
theoriis
ortum
habent').
In
38 Bacon, op.
cit.
(26),
82,
or Book
I, aphorism
xlix.
39 Bacon, op.
cit. (26), 79-83, or Book
I, aphorisms
xlv-li.
40 Bacon, op. cit. (26), 77,
84-6, or Book I, aphorisms
xlii,
liii-lviii.
41
I
am not sure
whether the
reference o 'Orbits'
in the English translation
of this phrase is correct,
although
it also appearsin the translation in Spedding'sedition, viii, 87, or Book I, aphorism lx. It has been suggestedto
me that by
Orbes Bacon may have meant
the fictitious spheres
on which the
planets were thought
to revolve; or
possibly the word
signified 'circles', one
of its possible meanings,
since he regardedas
false the
belief that celestial
bodies move
in
perfect
circles;
ibid.
79,
or Book I, aphorism
xlv. When speaking of circles
in
Novum
Organum,
however,
he used the word circulus.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
12/16
Francis Bacon's
concept of
objectivity 389
Bacon's
opinion it
was much easier to
expel
the
second
of these errors
by
getting
rid of
bad
theories than to
eliminate the
first,
which was
deeplyrooted,
complicated
and
due to
faulty,
incompetent abstraction.42
Finally, in
the
fourth category
were
the
idols
of
the theatre
('idola
theatri'),
consisting
of the
different
dogmas that
migrated
into human minds
from
false
systems
of
philosophy,
false
demonstrations
n
logic and false
principles
and
axioms
in the
sciences
and
which
gave
rise, like
stage plays, to
fictions and unreal
worlds. Bacon devoted
his
lengthiest
strictures
to
this class
of idols,
criticizing
various philosophies for their
deficiencies
and
errors.
The
Rationalist
school, for
example,
applied meditation and
ingenuity
of
wit to a
small amount
of
uncritically accepted
experience. The
Empirical
school,
to
which the
alchemists
belonged,
constructed
vain and incredible
systemsout
of
a
few
experiments,
wresting
facts
to make them conform with its conclusions. The Superstitious school, which included
Pythagorasand
Plato, mixed
theology with
philosophy to the
detriment of
each.
Aristotle,
whom Bacon
placed with the
Sophistical
school,
corrupted
natural
philosophy
with
his
logic, fashioning the
world out of
categories, and
although
he made some
experiments,
actually reached
his
conclusions beforehand and
failed to consult
experience.
Bacon
cautioned
against the
intemperance with which
philosophical systems either
give
or
withhold
their assent:
those too
ready
in
deciding
caused the
sciences
to
be
dogmatic
and
magisterial,
while the others,
who denied the
possibility of
knowledge, pursued
enquiries
that
led to nothing. He
indicted
'vicious
demonstrations'
('pravae
demonstrationes')
in
logic,43 whose effectwas to
make heworld
the slaveof
thoughtand thought
he
slaveof
words. He found fault with these
demonstrations for various
reasons: their use of
faulty
sense
impressions and of
notions ill drawn
from the
senses; their
reliance on a bad kind
of
induction that
infers the
principles of the
sciences by simple
enumeration; and their
mode of
discovery
and proof by
first establishing
the most general
principles and
then
derivingintermediate
axioms,
a
procedure he denounced
as 'the
parent
of all error
and the
curse
of all
science'. '
In
opposition to
these practices, he
maintained that the
best
demonstration was
experience provided it
did not go
beyond the
experiment, because
unless a
transfer to other
cases deemed
similar was
done in a correct
and orderly
way,
the
result would be
fallacious.
And he felt
forced to state that
the method
currently
used in
making experiments was blind and stupid.45
Bacon was
convinced that the
idols in all four
categories had to
be
renounced and
eliminated as far as
possible in
order to free the
human
understanding.46To be
sure, in
reviewing
them, he based
many of his
criticisms on his
own
natural or
experimental
philosophy
with
its belief in a
reformed
induction, which he
took as a
standard.
Moreover,
his
disparaging
and
destructivecomments
on the
doctrines
of
Plato and
Aristotle, and
other
philosophers
whose
influence he
wished
to
overthrow,
were
heavily biased
by his own
42
Bacon, op.
cit. (26), 78,
86-9, or
Book I,
aphorisms xlii,
lix-lx.
43
Bacon, op.
cit. (42), 99,
or Book I,
aphorismlxix.
44
Bacon,
op. cit. (42),
100, or
Book I,
aphorism lxix.
45 Bacon, op. cit. (42), 78, 90-100, or Book I, aphorisms xliv, lxii-lxx.
46
Bacon,
op.
cit.
(42),
99,
or
Book
I,
aphorism lxviii. In the
plan
of The Great
Instauration
he
expressed
the
view
that the first
two classes
of idols
were hard to
eradicate
and the other two
classes could
not
be
eradicated
at all. The
most that
could be done
with the latter,
he
said, was to
point them
out so that
their
insidious effect
on the mind
could be
identifiedand
overcome; ibid., 45.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
13/16
390 Perez Zagorin
polemical purpose and failed
to do them justice. In the
main, nevertheless, his overriding
aim was to reveal the aberrations
and failures of intelligence wrought by the idols'
sway.
What he attacked
in
the idols' effect upon the
mind were animism, anthropocentrismand
anthropomorphism, unreal abstract entities and human
wish projections and delusions
that saw in the universe
the reflection of their own image and desires. He endeavoured
to
teach the mind
to
be
aware
of its own naive and spontaneous operations, to
help it to
overcome its prejudiced,
self-centred assumptions and beliefs, and to enable it to
gain an
objective rationality and standpoint as an essential
prerequisite for the advancement of
knowledge of nature.
If we
attempt to define
the conception of objectivityunderlying and implicit
in Bacon's
analysis of the idols, we should have to say that it
means a mental attitude and type of
enquiry that leads to true knowledge and understandingof the world and the phenomena
of nature
and their causes.
It does not seem to carry with it any implication
of
disinterestedness, cognitive self-distancing or the suppression
of subjectivity or the self.47
As he conceived
of
it,
the consciousness and identification
of the idols, along with the
attempt
to banish their
influence,
was
equivalent
to a
reorientation,
redirection and
widening of the mind, the achievement
of a
new
clarity
and a rectified
perspective
in the
interests of scientific understanding
and its productiveresults. For Bacon this reorientation
was not incompatible
with
such strong cognitive
emotions as passion and
ambition
in
enquiry, pleasure
and
gratification
in
contributing to
the increase of knowledge, and
happiness in scientificdiscovery.48
Bacon is famed for his conviction that knowledge
brings
power and his insistence that the production of works of all kinds for the relief of the
human condition is the
proper end of knowledge. Nevertheless, he was always consistent
in
regarding ruth as the highest goal of scientific enquiry
from which works would
be sure
to
follow.
In
his naturalphilosophy
he
often compared
truth
to
light
and
placed
it
above
any
other
earthly good.49
The
thoughts
and
feelings
which
he
associated
with
the
quest
for
truth as
a
supreme
human
value
are
eloquently
stated
in his
essay
on truth: 'the
inquiry
of
truth,
which is
the
love-making and wooing
of
it,
the
knowledge
of
truth,
which
is
the
presence of it, and the belief of truth, which
is the
enjoying
of
it,
is
the
sovereign
good
of
human
nature'.50
47 One recent scholar's reading of Bacon's philosophy is that 'the inductive methodis a machine that displaces
the faculty
of choice' and,
in reference o the idols, that
'to advance in learning s to mortify the minds of inquirers
so that they see and perform
the works of truth'; see
John C. Briggs,
Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric
of Nature,
Cambridge,
MA., 1989, 9, 15. I have
not succeeded in finding any
warrant for these characterizations
n what
Bacon wrote. Nowhere in
his discussionof the idols does
he suggest that the mortification
of the mind is necessary
to eliminate or reduce their
influence. In the preface to
The New
Organon he refers to machinery
when, after
insisting
on the need for a fresh start
in the work of understanding,
he comments that the mind
must be guided
at
every
step and 'the
business done as if by machinery'
('ac res veluti per machinas
conficiatur'). As its context
immediately makes clear,
however, this statement does
not imply a
mechanical or machine-likeconception
of the
mind or the denial of its
faculty of choice. Thus he goes
on to say that
just as the mechanical arts
have not relied
for their achievements only on the naked
hands but sought the help
of instruments,
so in intellectualmatters
the
mind cannot rely solely
on the naked
forces of the understanding
but needs instruments and
machinery
to
accomplishgreat works. His essential point is that induction is such an instrument; Bacon, op. cit. (26), 61-2,
preface.
48
See
Scheffler,op.
cit.
(28), Appendix B,
'In
praise
of the
cognitive
emotions'.
49
See Zagorin, op. cit. (8), 88-9.
50
Bacon,
'Of
truth',
Essays, Works, xii,
82.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
14/16
Francis Bacon's concept of
objectivity 391
The
misapprehension
that
objectivity
for Bacon centred
on the
supremacy
he
assigned
to facts is
closely
connected with the mistaken
image
we continue to
have
of him
as a
pure
empiricist
who wished to divorce science from
theories,
hypotheses
and
interpretations.
Natural history, which he
designated
as
part
three of The Great
Instauration, occupied
a
vital
place
in
his
philosophy
of science because the facts it
supplied
on
various
topics
were
to
provide
the data
upon
which induction
would
operate.
In
the
instructions,
however,
that
he drew up for the
writing
of
natural
histories,
he did not
envisage
them
as
indiscriminate
accumulations of facts.
They
were intended in
principle
to consist of
critically
sifted
information on
particular subjects whose collection would be
steadily directed
by
the
investigator's questions, enriched
by experiments and controlled
by
the
aim of
facilitating
induction. Their
chief purpose, moreover,
was
to
aid
in
the formation of
axioms.51Bacon
condemned the syllogistic demonstration of Aristotelian naturalphilosophy for leaping at
once 'from particulars to
remote axioms' of the
highest
generality,
including
first
principles,
and then
erroneously treating
these
principles
as
unshakeable truths
which it
used to
prove middle-range
axioms;
whereas the correct
procedure,
he
argued, would be
to ascend
successively
from
particulars
to lesser
axioms to
intermediate axioms and
finally
to the most
general.52
He also decried
'anticipations
of nature'
('anticipationes naturae'),
by
which
phrase
he did
not mean
hypotheses,
as has
been
supposed,
but
the practice of rash
and
premature
generalizations
based on a
few familiar instances.53In
Bacon's
scheme,
axioms as a
higher
and more
generalized
level of
knowledge
that leads to an
operative
science,
not
facts,
are
the
principal
fruit and main
achievement he
expected from his
method.54He was also quite explicit that the axioms established
by induction must
cover
more
than the
particulars rom which
they were
derived; they
should be
'wider and
larger'
and
capable
of
indicating
'new
particulars'
that would serve
to confirm
them.55Axioms
thus functioned
in
Bacon's
philosophy
as
theories and
hypotheses to lead to the
discovery
of
new
facts, suggest further
experiments and generate
new axioms. His
recognition of the
continual
interaction
between
experiment and
theory
is well
conveyed
in
the following
declaration in
The New
Organon:
'my
method
['via et
ratio'], as
I
have often
clearly
stated ... is
this,
not
to extract works
from works or
experiments
from
experiments
(like
the
empirics), but from works
and experiments
to extract causes
and axioms, and again
51
Francis Bacon, A
Preparative toward
a
Natural and
Experimental History
(Parasceve ad
Historiam
Naturalem et
Experimentalem),
Works, viii;
the Latin original
is
in
ibid., ii. Bacon
included this
treatise
in
the
same volume
as The New
Organon; see also the discussion
of Baconian
natural
history
in
Zagorin, op.
cit.
(8),
103-6.
52
Bacon, op. cit. (26),
137-8, or Book I,
aphorism civ.
53 Bacon, op. cit.
(26),
73-4, or Book I,
aphorisms xxvi-xxx.
Karl Popper
erroneously supposed that the
anticipations
of
nature' Bacon
criticized were the
same as
hypotheses; see his The
Logic of
Discovery, London,
1975, 279
n., and
Conjectures and
Refutations, New York,
1962, 255.
54 I have
shown elsewhere
that Bacon refrained from
using
the word
'methodus' or
'method' to
describe his
logic of discovery
based
upon induction and
the reasons why he
did so; see
Zagorin, op. cit. (8),
51-7. As
pointed
out in ibid. and likewise noted below, instead of methodus, he preferredsuch phrases as via et ratio for his
discovery
procedure. It is convenient,
however, and need not
lead to
misunderstanding, o follow
the
terminology
of the
English translation in
Spedding's edition
of Bacon's
Works, and refer to Baconian
induction
as
his
method;
see,
e.g.,
Bacon, op. cit.
(26), 61, 63
(preface), 74, 159, or Book
I,
aphorisms xxxiii, cxxvii.
55
Bacon, op. cit. (26),
139, or Book I,
aphorism cvi.
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
15/16
392
Perez Zagorin
from those
causes and axioms
new works and experiments, as
a legitimate interpreterof
nature
.56
Finally,
in
this connection, it is worth
noticing the presence of the word
'interpreter'
('interpretes') in
the above passage and the
prominence in
Bacon's philosophy of what he
called 'interpretation'
('interpretatio'). Interpres
n
classical
Latin signified an
explainer,
a
translator,
an
interpreter,and
interpretatioreferred o an
explanation or interpretation.
The
derivations of both words
were also part of the
English language in
Bacon's time.
Deeply conscious of
nature's subtlety and its
many unobserved and
unobservable
operations, Bacon did
not
think the
understanding of nature, or
what we would call
scientific explanation and the
discovery of laws of
nature, consisted
in
the
establishment
and
registration
of
particular
facts. He
always
conceived of such
explanation
as a work of
interpretation n which the facts contributed by natural historywere certainly essential but
also
ancillary.
The New
Organon
is subtitled
Aphorisms
Concerning
the
Interpretationof
Nature and the
Kingdom of Man, ('Aphorismi
de
Interpretatione
Naturae et
Regno
Hominis'),57
and its
very first sentence depicts 'man' as 'the
servant and
interpreter
of
nature'
('Homo,
naturae minister et
interpres').
Other
writings contain
the
phrase
'the
interpretation
of
nature'
in
their
titles,58
and the word
'interpretatio'
occurs
quite
frequently
n
his reflectionson
science. By 'interpretation' he
usually
referred
o his method
of
induction as the
basis
for
explaining the
workings
of nature.
'That reason which is
elicited from
things by
a
just
and methodical
process',
he
said,
'I am
accustomed to
call
the
Interpretation
of
Nature', ('illam rationem
quae
debitis modis
elicitur
a
rebus
InterpretationemNaturae ... vocare
consuevimus'),
and he described 'true and
legitimate
induction as the
very key
of
interpretation' ('Inductio legitima
et
vera, quae ipsa
clavis
est
interpretationis').59
Hence in Book II of The
New
Organon,
when
he
comes to
expound
his 'directions for the
interpretation
of
nature',
he
says they
embrace 'two
generic
divisions;
the one how to educe and
form
axioms from
experience;
the other how to
deduce and derive new
experiments
from
axioms'.
60
Statements like these
appear
to leave
no doubt
that
in
Bacon's natural
philosophy,
interpretation
as a reliance on a
properly
designed
induction for the attainment of axioms
necessarily
included
theories and was
conceived
of
as
a
theoretical
enterprise.
Bacon's analysisof the idols of the mind seems to have little if any precedent n the work
of
previous
thinkers
and
is one of his
most
significant
contributions to the
philosophy
of
science, although
its
originality
has not
always
been
recognized
or
understood.61Michael
56
Bacon, op.
cit.
(26), 148,
or Book
I, aphorism
cxvii.
57 For the significance of Bacon's idea of the kingdom of man, see Zagorin, op. cit. (8),
77-9.
58 See, for example, Bacon, Valerius Terminusof the Interpretationof Nature, Works, vi, a work
written
in
English; De InterpretationeNaturae Proemium (Proemiumon the Interpretationof Nature), ibid., vii; Cogitata
et Visa; de InterpretationeNaturae, sive de Scientia Operativa (Thoughts and Conclusions on The
Interpretation
of
Nature or An
Operative Science),
in
ibid.
59
Bacon, op. cit. (26), 73, 179, or Book I, aphorism xxvi; Book. II, aphorism x; see also the
preface to this
work, ibid., 64, in which Bacon statedthat he has chosen to call his method or way the 'Interpretationof nature'.
60 Bacon, op. cit. (26), 178, or Book II, aphorism x.
61
In
his preface to Novum Organum, Bacon's learned editor, Robert L. Ellis, examined the
possibility
that
Bacon had borrowed
his
classification of the idols from his thirteenth-centurynamesake Roger Bacon, whose
Opus
Maius included an
account of four offendicula or causes
of error
mpeding
the
road to
knowledge.
Ellis saw
little similarity
between
FrancisBacon's discussion of the idols and
the work
by Roger Bacon, and also noted that
This content downloaded from 200.3.149.179 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:36:55 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/19/2019 Idols of the Mind
16/16
Francis Bacon's concept of objectivity
393
Ayers, writing on the
theory
of
knowledge
in the
recent CambridgeHistory of Seventeenth-
Century Philosophy, goes far astray
in
commenting
on the idols
that
'Bacon's list of
intellectual
vices
appears
as a
polemic
aimed at
philosophical
and
religious
enemies rather
than as a general
natural history of human unreasonablenessand cognitive failure'.
2
The
identification and
explanation of some of the main causes of human unreasonableness
and
cognitive failure is exactly what Bacon's discussion of the idols is
all
about. No other
philosopher of the
seventeenth century tried to explore the sources of error in science
with
more care, or
showed greater awareness and understandingof what we can
retrospectively
recognize as the
problem of objectivity, or tried harder to devise constructive
suggestions
for
the achievement of objectivity in the conduct of
enquiry.
the former
could not have known
OpusMaius,
which was not printed
until the
nineteenth century. His
conclusion
was that Bacon's
conception
of the idols
was
'altogether
his
own';
Bacon, op.
cit.
(11),
i,
158-9.
Fowler,
who
also
considers this subject in his edition
of Novum
Organum, 212-13,
is in
accord with Ellis and
observes that
the
resemblance between
the offendicula and
the idols is
very slight.
62 Michael Ayers, 'Theories of knowledge and belief', The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century
Philosophy
(ed. Daniel
Garber and Michael
Ayers), 2 vols.,
Cambridge, 1998, ii, 1044.
Another
misunderstanding
is
John C. Briggs's
confusion of the idols
with
idolatry and his claim
that Bacon's
discussion of the idols
regarded
opposition
to the new sciences
as 'idolatrous
heresies' which
must be 'smashed'.
'Bacon's science
and religion',
The
Cambridge Companion to Bacon
(ed. Markku
Peltonen), Cambridge,
1996, 177-8.