Bacon's Idols

Overall, I enjoyed reading Bacon mostly because of the back and forth I encountered. At one moment I found myself agreeing with what he writes, and at another completely disagreeing. In 46 Bacon writes that once the human understanding accepts an opinion it tends to find other things that line up in support of that opinion despite the fact that there is a tremendous amount of evidence which points to its inaccuracy. I find this in large part to be true. 54 ties in with this theme as well where Bacon writes that "Men become attached to certain particular sciences" because in some cases they created it and in others they have devoted a great deal of time studying it.

In 32 Bacon takes a bold and slightly arrogant step when he writes that ancient authors were quite smart, just not smart enough however to use proper methods. 18 and 19 are a bit puzzling to me, in 18 he writes that scientific advancement is nothing more than vulgarity and he suggests that "a method of intellectual operation be introduced". It's hard to imagine any real scientific progress taking place without employing at least a little "intellectual operation". Then in 19 he writes that there are two ways to truth, well actually there is only one way because the way that has been tried thus far leads only to "general" and "middle" axioms. The second and "true" way has not yet been attempted. In 11, Bacon writes that what we now know in science does not lead us to knowing more in science. But does not each new discovery borrow from the last and lend some of itself to those to come?

I found it curious in 2 of Book Two, when Bacon uses the term "Forms- a name which I the rather adopt because it has grown into use and become familiar". Especially when he spends so much time writing of a reinvention so to speak, and stating that "we must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve forever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress".

I did find the section on the Idols of the Tribe, Cave, Marketplace and Theater to be accurate and effective. I do believe in some sense that it is our nature to distort the nature of things whereby we cling to our own formulation of things after taking part in the conversation of the "they"