Bacon, Bacon

Francis Bacon was still a religious man, but he believed that the Church had completely lost it's way and ultimately, Bacon would take away the Church's power to educate. Bacon wanted to the intellectual transformation of the Church because according to him, the Church had committed idolatry.

Bacon's Four Idols goes something like this:

1. Idols of Tribe: This is the idea that there is a bias of human beings to jump to irrational conclusions based on new or strange things presented rather than to actually look and take the time to understand the inner meaning or truth of it. People are so comfortable with the normal unchanging things that when something new is presented, we fear it and give it a label and conclude that it is wrong or bad. We just have not discovered it or explored it's knowledge yet and therefore it results in a bad conclusion. The Church did not want to accept anything that wasn't theirs. They did not want to because science was new to them and strange so it was immediately labeled bad.

In today's world it still happens. New kids get picked on because they are new. At least that's the stereotypical situation. Just because someone is weird or a loner, they get picked on at school because they are not like everyone else. Thus it is jumping to a conclusion.

2. Idols of the Cave: This is the process of creating individual biases through the educational system. Because of someone's educational status, we create biases that they know what is best or because they are from a specific school, they don't know anything. The Church's educational system was extremely bias where they showed all the good things the Church did but not all the violent things that occurred along with it.

Today, we see it all the time in history text books and how words are twisted depending on the perspective. In U.S textbooks all the wars and battles are twisted to seem like we're the good guys but in reality we aren't all the time. They don't show how many people we have killed but the good stuff like what the U.S gained instead. This shows how there are biases through the educational system and we are taught that the U.S is always good and does justice. What's the real justice of the Iraq war? Is it all the people that have died or what we have gained?

3. Idols of the Market Place: This is the language that is created to share knowledge that gives off a specific connotation to the statement. The way someone words a statement can twist the real meaning. It can soften the way someone reports the news or bring about a harsh perspective to it. Depending on the language and words we use, things can see good or bad. Bacon believed the Church used this method to twist their words because they were more concerned with winning arguments than revealing the truth. As long as things sounded right to them

The way we say things can affect the way someone takes in the information. There's double meanings to words and even today people sugar coat the truth so that its not identifiable.

4. Idols of the Theatre: This is the fact that the Church gave reverence to only a certain amount of Greek scholars but has ignored any other understandings of the world. By taking these Greek scholars as the truth is wrong because without things to argue and question it, the world would not have progressed. We always need to relook at all the things that we have come to see as the truth and find loopholes because if we naturally take everything as being true then the world would not progress. We can't just re;y on some Greek scholars but be open to different ideas to understand the world because every person has a different take on things. Every person has a perspective that someone else does not see.