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| 24312 | Will and emotion influence understanding, creating false knowledge, and believing what we prefer |
| Full Idea: The human understanding is not composed of dry light, but is subject to influence from the will and emotions, a fact that creates fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true. | |||
| From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620], p.44), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 5.4 | |||
| A reaction: Cognitive bias! What a striking observation, long before Kant's Copernican Revolution. Bacon is obviously somewhat right - but to what extent? I defend the concept of genuine objectivity. Modern scientific methods come closest. |
| 16639 | Only individual bodies exist |
| Full Idea: Nothing truly exists in nature beyond individual bodies. | |||
| From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 182 | |||
| A reaction: [Unusually, Pasnau gives no reference in the text; possibly II:1-2] What this leaves out, from even an auster nominalist ontology, is undifferentiated stuff like water. Even electrons don't seem quite distinct from one another. |
| 16033 | There are only individual bodies containing law-based powers, and the Forms are these laws |
| Full Idea: Though nothing exists in nature except individual bodies which exhibit pure individual acts [powers] in accordance with law…It is this law and its clauses which we understand by the term Forms. | |||
| From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620], p.103), quoted by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §3 | |||
| A reaction: This isn't far off what Aristotle had in mind, when he talks of forms as being 'principles', though there is more emphasis on mechanisms in the original idea. Note that Bacon takes laws so literally that he refers to their 'clauses'. |
| 21950 | Science must clear away the idols of the mind if they are ever going to find the truth |
| Full Idea: We must clear away the idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein, and so beset men's minds that truth can hardly find an entrance. | |||
| From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620], 38), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 2 | |||
| A reaction: [He goes on to list the types of idol] |