Idols of the Mind

Introduction

Francis Bacon is known as the most influential and versatile English writer of the seventeenth century, his work covered a wide range of subjects including ethics, philosophy, science, law, history, and politics. Bacon was a key man for the scope of modern scientific thought, to develop a process of reasoning called induction, this process is to draw general conclusions from particular situations.

Francis Bacon worked much about the concept of "idols", defined as those notions or false images created in the mind. These idols are separated or distinguished by Bacon in four categories. The idols of the mind are general to all men and are therefore the most important. Such idols are defined by thinking of things, or the same universe, there are an order of equality, discipline and order which is usually higher than what the reality is. Thus, Bacon wants to show that the human mind is very conservative and that this means that, many times, the news are not so well received and compared or assimilated to those already known (Schmidt, pp. 5). This human behavior to the distortion of the news gives a dominant character to the claim before the denial, which was essential to the thinker Bacon to formulate a law. The idols of the tribe will eventually lead to the falsity of certain data that we want to play through the senses but they give us sometimes confusing data.

The idols are led foundation in human nature, in its imperfection, the uneven mirror, which reflects the things and disfigured in a curved form.

Discussion

The basis of scientific knowledge, according to Bacon, should be based on induction and experiment. Induction may be complete (perfect) and incomplete. Complete induction means a regular occurrence and exhaustible any property subject in the experiment. Inductive generalizations are based ...