The Four Idols free essay sample

The Four Idols, and Steven Jay Goulds, Nonmoral Nature, are quite compatible as comparisons. I would say more so than comparing Goulds work with Charles Darwins Natural Selection, from a literary standpoint. I think Bacon and Gould would have shared some similar ideas and agreed with one another on several issues. When describing Bacons Idols of the Tribe, Bacon states,have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measurer of things And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. Bacon is saying that men are pretentious and they have distorted nature with their own human nature. Gould, in Nonmoral Nature, refers to man as a host and says that I suspect that nothing evokes greater disgust in most of us than slow destruction of a host by an internal parasite slow ingestion, bit by bit, from the inside. Gould is speaking in literal terms about the host and the internal parasite; however, I think Gould is speaking figuratively, as well, and that is exactly what Bacon was describing in the Idols of the Tribe. Man or human understanding distorts and discolors the nature of things according to Bacon just as the slow destruction of a host by an internal parasite according to Gould. The intellectual issues that Bacon and Gould share are that basically, men destroy themselves from the inside out. Gould and Bacon may find common ground in science and religion. Bacon says that the Idols of the Care are the idols of the individual man. Bacon claims men become attached to certain particular sciences and speculations, either because they fancy themselves the authors and inventors thereof, or because they have bestowed the greatest pains upon them and become most habituated to them. Bacon is saying that men find their root in science either because ostentatiously they feel they came up with the idea on their own or because they have toyed and became familiar with a subject. Gould, having great respect and admiration towards Darwin, Gould writes: Just a few sentences after invoking the ichneumons, and in words that express both the modesty of this splendid man and the compatibly, through lack of contact, between science and true religion, Darwin wrote to Asa Gray I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profoundfor the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate of the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Both Bacon and Gould find that man seems to play a large role in science, or so he thinks. They are both giving reference to man and his seemingly important role in science, although the truth is nature is science and man cannot begin to comprehend its endless possibilitiesBacon would have related the ultimate ethical issues raised by a consideration of the ichneumon to the Idols of the Cave and Idols of the Marketplace. Bacon, again, when referring to the Idols of the Cave speaks of owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature. The ichneumon, disgusting and twisted as its habits may be are referring to his own peculiar nature. Bacon when discussing the Idols of the Marketplace says that these idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other For it is by discourse that men associate;and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. The ichneumons, though not using words, makes ill and unfit choices as well as guards and defends themselves. Gould describes these ill and unfit choices saying, Since an active host would easily dislodge the egg, the ichneumon mother often simultaneously injects a toxin that paralyzes the caterpillar or other victim. The paralysis may be permanent, and the caterpillar lies, alive but immobile, with the agent of its future destruction secure on its belly. The egg hatches, the helpless caterpillar twitches, the wasp larva pierces and begins its grisly feast. Though gross and nearly intolerable ethically to man on a conscience level, men act socially the same way. Bacon comes across to me as a man who would not see the ichneumon in the same way the nineteenth-century theologians did; basically as abominations. Bacon would view them as a part of nature, the continuous cycle of life, and though disgusting, somewhat seemingly evil, are really just following those lines of division which are most obvious to the vulgar understanding. Nature would not have been viewed in ethical or moral terms according to Bacon, but rather in terms of that in which they are. Bacon seems to believe nature is the only thing that is undisturbed. Man is, as Bacon puts so beautifully in the Idols of the Theater, Lastly, there are the idols which have immigrated into mens minds form the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. *Brilliant! The ichneumons are vermin, creatures, insects, doing all they know how to do; kill and reproduce. Men on the other hand are puppets; do what they are programmed to do.