Talk:Idola fori

Mutatis mutandis
Yes, I'm going to be looking at your other edits.

Plenty of WP:RS for this. WP:GA might be a bit of a stretch, but it could happen. Thanks for making the stub.

Potential sources to follow.

Garamond Lethe t c  03:31, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Name your concern clearly.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The first dozen books I consulted gave a radically different definition than the one you provided. As your was unsourced, I wasn't able to tell if the problem was with your source or with your summary of it.


 * The article itself relies far too much on direct quotes, but that's how I write stubs, too. That'll change as we bring in more WP:RS.


 * Garamond Lethe t c  04:22, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Garamond, yes clearly this is a stubbish article and can be improved, but why reverse basic copy editing for example? Concerning the lead there should be a definition and the one I put in quickly is consistent with what our stubbish article says, and with commentaries I have read. Simply deleting it is obviously tendentious behaviour, especially when the sequence of events and your edit summary make it clear that this is effectively WP:HOUNDing, extending from your personal attacks, disruption and silliness on Intelligent design. It is great that you have read 12 books, but not very helpful information on its own unless you mention what they said which disagreed with the present lead sentence. If you have a clear point then you should be able to put it in words.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 04:37, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I have this image of myself in my best Dr. Evil outfit, fiendishly plotting maximum article disruption by cleverly reverting typographical edits and hiding them in substantial fixes. Ok, I don't really have that image.  But you do.  (I didn't notice the rest of the change.  It was an accident.  My apologies.  I did enjoy the note you left on my talk page, though.)


 * Quoting WP:HOUNDING:"Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles."


 * You've given me good cause to distrust your summaries of source material at Intelligent design, and I decided to check to see if the problem existed in other articles you've edited. I do the same thing with vandal accounts and sockpuppets.


 * Here's how wikihounding works. If, in the eyes of a neutral editor, I'm making bad or inconsequential edits in order to vex you, that's wikihounding.  If, however, in the eyes of a neutral editor I'm unqualifiedly improving the article, particularly by improving your work, that's not wikihounding, even if you happen to be vexed.  This article is a stub, there are lots of reliable sources, improvements shouldn't be too hard to come by.


 * Would you like to collaborate with me? I'd be interested in taking a look at the sources you mentioned.


 * Thanks,


 * Garamond Lethe t c  06:03, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Sticking to my accusation and if you want to bring in outside parties because of that accusation that is up to you. (Please note that you are not a "neutral editor" and your claims of "good cause" are silly. The bad cause is simply your emotions (no evil plot required), which are resulting from your own silly actions.) In the meantime can you reduce your blah blah and get back on topic? I understand you have 12 definitions of idola fori ready to discuss here. Please post them if they are real.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:37, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Now that's a form of argumentation I haven't seen since I stopped badgering creationists on talk.origins lo these many years ago. "Oh yeah, well prove that evolution has been observed in nature!" they'd say, and fifteen minutes later I'd be back with a fistful of citations to that effect.  "Well prove that not all evolution textbooks are based on Darwin!" and I'd come back with a list of textbooks that didn't cite Darwin.  They never learned how to look this stuff up on their own, and they never learned that I did know how to look stuff up.


 * I know you know that Google Books exists, and I think you know that Bacon has had a mountain of books written about him. But for whatever reason, you've never plugged Idola fori into google books and browsed through the results (which is the first thing I did).  And then after I tell you that these books exist, you still don't head over to google books to see if I'm bluffing.  Nor do you supply your own source.  Interesting....


 * I'll be adding sources below throughout the next few days as time allows.


 * Garamond Lethe t c  15:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Well that really is a silly answer. You said you had just looked at 12 sources. Were you enhancing the truth a little? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I've looked at about two dozen at this point. Not all of them are worth transcribing.  Not one has mentioned context, but I think you knew that.  Garamond Lethe t c  20:07, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As you say above though, what you mean is googling. Easy to hit high numbers by googling. Your initial posting was clearly implying something else.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:10, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * What I'm doing now is called a "literature search" or "literature review". I start with a google search (usually scholar or books) and get a broad sense of how common the term is, when it was used, and how often works that use the term are cited.  I then select several documents for a closer look and read the paragraphs surrounding the terms.  I then either switch search engines or change search terms and repeat.  After looking at a couple dozen papers or book chapters, I usually have a good sense of not only how the term is used now, but how it has changed over time.  I then start tracking down the citations in those documents, noting other potential search terms.  If this isn't working well, I contact an expert in the area and ask for a good review article.
 * If calling this "googling" makes you feel any better, go right on ahead. If you're trying to communicate effectively with someone who does research for a living, use the term of art.  Garamond Lethe t c  23:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Oh please. I am not complaining about you using google to get a basic first opinion. I often do the same. What is awkward for you is that your words implied a completed search, a detailed knowledge, and very specific discoveries which showed my incompetence etc. You made far too much of it. This was to say the least a bit of an exaggeration, as then became clear. But I'd be quite happy to work with you or anyone. So please get over the awkward starting point. Please stop being so obsessed with "beating" me. You keep talking yourself into extreme positions and getting yourself frustrated and aggressive.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:33, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Dickie (1922)
"In spite of Bacon's recognition of Idola Fori, he, like Aristotle, is frequently led astray by the common use of words. Aristotle made no attempt to attach a definite, scientific meaning to the word `hot', for example. He did not get beynd the vague meaning attached to that term in popular discourse.  Bacon's inquiry into the nature of heat exhibits the same tendency, albeit that inquiry was designed to reach a scientific result.  Thus Bacon assumes that anything called hot is of the same fundamental nature as anything else called hot, e.g., all flame has heat, so also all villous substances, as wool, skins of animals, and down of birds.  The same supremacy of words accounts for the belief, common to Aristotle and Bacon, that heat and cold are absolute qualities.  It accounts, too, for the belief, also common to Aristotle and Bacon, that natures and appetites are absolute qualities. Thus Bacon speaks, for example, of certain bodies being in `sympathy' with certain others, preferring these others as better, etc. Gold, he says again, and other metals in leaf do not `like' the surrounding air. Paper, too, and cloth, and things of that kind, do not `get on well' with the air, which is inserted into and mingled with their pores. So the `gladly' suck in water or other liquid, and drive out the air. Like Aristotle, Bacon believed it to be the `nature' of light bodies to move upwards from the earth's surface, of heavy bodies to move downwards to the earth's surface. And all this notwithstanding Bacon's recognition that 'what are called occult and specific properties, or sympathies and antipathies, are in great part corruptions of philosophy'; his assertion that 'my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding ... that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things; and his theoretic avoidance of anthropomorphism in natural science. (emphasis in original, internal citations ommitted)"


 * I do not see much use for this one, because it is only mentioning idola fori in order to complain that Bacon fell into it himself. (No doubt he would not be shocked by such a claim. Why would mankind need a great instauration aimed at generations of methodical work if one man was enough.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I understand how you're reading this, but.... ok, small digression. When I was a bushy-tailed undergrad just starting the Honors program, I was given Aristotle's Poetics to read.  I skimmed it and announced during our first session that it was a trivial work filled will obvious truisms (a play has a beginning, a middle and and end, etc.).  My adviser leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and say "That's very interesting, Garamond.  You're exactly wrong."  And I was.  That point began my career as a scholar and scientist.


 * So, you're exactly wrong, which isn't a bad place to start from.


 * The intent of the author is not to slag on Bacon. Rather, the author gives a vivid example&mdash;the best one out of all those I've seen so far&mdash;of how subtle this error can be; the fact that he draws it from Bacon's own work just makes it that much more compelling.  To recap, both Bacon and Aristotle assign the same word to two superficially similar phenomena, the proceed to reason using that word about the cause of the phenomena.  This approach is entirely reasonable.  Indeed, we can't reason without this kind of abstracting and generalizing from experience.  But in this case, the common generalization leads to error because the underlying phenomena are only superficially similar.


 * I also find this quote valuable because it shows how the interpretation of the term has changed over time. We're now living in a world that is comfortable with semiotics and The Treachery of Images, so more recent works tend to use that language:  this idola refers errors caused by reasoning about the words rather than what the words represent.  It looks like there's yet another meaning taking root in the clinical literature, but I haven't had a chance to track that down yet.


 * The takeaway here is that we're looking a pretty substantial article if we're going to be tracing the evolution of the term over time.


 * And now I need to write a journal review and attend to my inbox. Hopefully more over the weekend.


 * Garamond Lethe t c  18:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Well Garamond, maybe you read me wrongly, like you once did Aristotle. :) By pointing out that Bacon would not be surprised, I do not deny the quote above its general point, but simply questioned how useful it is for this article. (And I do not deny it might be useful.) Please note I have not read the rest of this source only the quote here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:56, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Pssibly a more useful passage on page 479, comparing and contrasting the two:--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)"Aristotle, indeed, did, as we have already noticed, appreciate the vague and misleading character of popular distinctions, but this appreciation was no essential part of his philosophy, as was the exposition of idola part of Bacon's. Consequently Bacon recognizes the difficulty of attaining to simple natures defined with scientific accuracy. Meantime they are vague, indistinct, inaccurate notions - idola fori."

Hunter (1832)
"In this part of the work much light has been derived from that ingenious Philologist, Horne Tooke .... His views of abstraction are generally, but not always either clear or just. When he says 'strictly speaking there is nothing arbitrary in language,' he expresses what is truly philosophical, for he evidently admits that 'we are struck with a similarity in certain respects' before 'we invent a common appellative to express the objects that agree in exciting the same relative feeling;' but his admission, like expressions on the same subject that are found in several philosophical writings, 'arises,' as an able Metaphysician observes, 'from the inconsistency of error, and not from the writers having arrived at the truth.'&mdash;For how can it be reconciled with such expressions as these? 'The business of the mind, as far as it concerns language, extends no farther than to receive impressions, that is, to have sensations or feelings.'  'What are called the operations of the mind, are merely the operations of language.'  'Language is the instrument of thought.'  If we expel from the mind what Bacon terms Idola Fori, ('Idols of the market-place,' that is, 'prejudices arising from mere words and terms in our common intercourse with mankind,') we shall find that all abstract truth ultimately rests upon,&mdash;1st, 'A perception or conception of two or more objects,'&mdash;2dly, 'A feeling of their similarity in certain respects,' and 3dly, [']The invention of a common appellative, to express the objects that agree in exciting the same relative feeling .' (emphasis in original)"


 * No clear use comes to my mind at first sight, at least for what this article needs most urgently. I guess the article might however contain a section near the end which links up the idola fori with modern discussions that continue the same tradition?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Not sure I want to pull related discussions (the area is vastly vast), but I would be interested in having the article sketch how the use of the term has changed over time. As another example:  "How can Francis Bacon Help Forensic Science?  The Four Idols of Human Biases" Itiel E. Dror, Jurimetrics Vol. 50, No. 1 (FALL 2009), pp. 93-110.  I don't remember the term "bias" being used in the earlier literature, which I find interesting.  Unfortunately, my limited wikipedia time has been taken up chasing sockpuppets out of Kilometers per hour.  I'll catch up as a I can....  Garamond Lethe t c  05:22, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Maybe something for the future, so here is another note that might help someone find a lead. It seems J S Mill's fallacies took at least some of their orientation from Bacon. He mentions Bacon approvingly.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:34, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Halliday (1993)
"The early humanists, founders of modern science in the West, paid more serious attention to language in their endeavours. In part, this was forced upon them because they were no longer using the language that had served their predecessors, Latin, and instead faced the job of developing their various emerging 'national' languages into resources for constructing knowledge. But their concern with language went deeper than that.  On the one hand they were reacting against what they saw as (in our jargon of today) a logocentric tendency in medieval thought; the best-known articulation of this attitude is Bacon's `idols of the marketplace' (idola fori), one of the four idola or fale conceptions which he felt distorted scientific thinking.  The idola fori result, in Dijksterhuis' words, from the thoughtless use of language, from the delusion that there must correspond to all names actually existing things, and from the confusion of the literal and the figurative meaning of a word. (Dijksterhuis, 1961, p. 398)" The `delusion' referred to here had already been flagged by William of Occam, whose often quoted stricture on unnecessary entities was in fact a warning against reifying theoretical concepts such as `motion'; the perception that lay behind this suspicion of language was later codified in the nominalist philosophy of John Locke, summed up by David Oldroyd as follows:"The important point, of course, is that the new philosophy claimed that new knowldge was to be obtained by experimentation, not by analysis of language or by establishing the correct definitions of things. If you wanted to know more about the properties of gold than anyone had ever known before you would need a chemical laboratory, not a dictionary! (Oldroyd, 1988, p.91–92)"


 * This looks very useful: it puts Bacon in the context of humanism, and other background, and also how this played out in the future, with Locke mentioned. Some of this could provide a basic "origin of concept" section?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * NOTE: This is one of those google books which is blocked to non Americans.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:11, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Perez Ramos (1993)
| publisher=Routledge | location=London | year=1993 | ISBN=0-203-02914-3}} "Mankind, according to Bacon, is fatally prone to err fro a variety of reasons. As a species, it has its own limitations which make error inescapable; such intellectual and sensory constraints are called Idola Tribus or Idols of the Tribe, and there is no hint of an optimistic note as to whether they can be overcome or cured. (Nov. Org. I, 399-41).  Moreover, each man, when trying to know anything, invariably brings with him his own set of preferences and dislikes, that is, his own psychological make-up, which will colour whatever he attempts to cognize in its purity.  These prejudices are the so-called Idola Specus or Idols of the Cave (Bacon is alluding to Plato's image in Republic 514A-519D), to which all of us, as individuals, are subject (Nov. Org. I, 42).  Further yet, man is the hopeless victim of the traps and delusions of language, that is, of his own great tool of knowledge and communication, and hence he will fall prey to the Idola Fori'' or Idols of the Market place, which unavoidably result from his being a speaking animal (Nov. Org. I, 43)."

Jardine (2000)
A significant portion of Book One of The New Organon is taken up with discussion of what Bacon names the 'Idols', or 'Illusions'&mdash;impediments of various kinds which interfere with the proess of clear human reasoning. These so-called Idols are of four kinds: Idols of the Tribe Idols of the Cave, Idols of the Marketplace and Idols of the Theater.

The Idols of the Tribe are errors in perception itself, caused by the limitations of the human sensese which give access to the data of nature. The Idols of the Cave, by contrast, are errors introduced by each individual's personal prejudices and attachment to particular styles or modes of explanation&mdash;as in his fellow-courtier (and personal physician to Elizabeth I) William Gilbert's trying to account for all natural phenomena in terms of magnetism.

The Idols of the Marketplace arise directly from shared use of language and from commerce between people. At the most basic level, the ascription of names to things, in ordinary language usage, fails to discriminate properly between distinctive phenomena, or names abstract entities 'vaguely', so as to give rise to false beliefs above them.

Finally, Idols of the Theater are the misleading consequences for human knowledge of the systems of philosophy and rules of demonstration (reliable proof) currently in place.


 * At first sight, does not seem to add much to the primary source itself.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Mott (2004)
From google books search I find Mott 2004. Page 15 is all about idola fori. Page 17 refers to it in passing as Impediments of language and culture, and brackets together idola tribus and idola specus as related to "observation" in the context of how scientists and philosophers balance knowledge and understanding between orthodoxy (idola theatri), observation and insight (idola tribus).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:42, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Fowler (1926)
idola fori, idols of the market (place). This learned phrase, in Latin or English, is not seldom used by the unlearned, who guess at its meaning &amp; guess wrong. It is a legitimate enough phrase in writing meant for the educated only, but hardly in the ordinary newspaper, where it is certain not to be understood by most readers, &amp; where it therefore tends to be given, by slipshod extension, the false sense that those who have never been told what it means may be expected to attach to it; that false sense is vulgar errors or popular fallacies, one of which names should be used instead of it, since it in fact has a much more limited meaning than they, &amp; one not obvious without explanation. See popularized technicalities.

It is the third of Bacon's four divisions of fallacies, more often mentioned than the other three because its meaning seems, though it is not in fact, plainer. There are the idols (i.e. the fallacies) of the tribe, the cave, the market, &amp; the theatre, which are picturesque names for (1) the errors men are exposed to by the limitations of the human understanding (a members of the tribe of man); (2) those a person is liable to owing to his idiosyncrasy (as enclosed in the cave of self); (3) those due to the unstable relation between words &amp; their meanings (which fluctuate as the words are bandied to &amp; from in the conversational exchange or word-market); &amp; (4) those due to false philosophical or logical systems (which hold the stage successively like plays). The tribe is the human mind, the cave is idiosyncrasy, the market is talk, &amp: the theater is philosophy; who would guess all that unaided? who, on the contrary, would not guess that an idol of the marketplace was just any belief to which the man in the street yields a mistaken deference? The odd thing is that no better instance could be found of an idol of the market than the phrase itself, oscillating between its real meaning &amp; the modern misuse, so often propagating one in the very act of ridiculing the rest; well, 'tis sport to see the enginer [sic] hoist with his own petard. The mistake is common enough, but is not easily exhibited except in passages of some length, so that one must here suffice; the tendency to exalt the man of action above the man of theory may be ill-advised, but it has nothing to do with shifting acceptations of words, &amp; is not an idolum fori:&mdash''With us the active characters, the practical men, the individuals who, whether in public or in private affairs, 'get on with the job', have always held the first place in esteem; the theorists &amp; philosophers a place very secondary by comparison. It is not easy to account for this common estimate. For one thing, as soon as inquiry is made into it, the belief proves to be without foundation&mdash;just one of the'' idols of the marketplace. (Emphasis in original. Note the google books version has multiple OCR errors which have been corrected by referring to the dead tree version.)

Funari (2011)
Discusses how this subject was taken up by Hobbes.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:51, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of sources for lead
These sources might of course be useful in many ways, but let me remind you of the question at hand. You were, as I understand it, saying that you checked 12 books, which disagreed with defining Idola fori as "a deeply rooted tendency for people to come to faulty understandings, because of confusions about what words mean in particular contexts". (Which is just pretty much what Bacon says, and the sources above take for granted. See the Bacon quotes in the article now.) Do you have any specific citations which would indicate a real mistake in that definition I put in the lead?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:18, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * 1–4 above. 1–3 are the strongest.  The error lies in reasoning about words rather than what the words represent.  So if I told you that none of these texts I've examined so far contains the word "context", and thus you summary was wrong, that would be an error of this type (although it can make for a persuasive argument).  If I instead tell you that none of these authors are discussing context, but rather false generalizations when making abstractions, then the error doesn't occur.


 * More later.... <tt>Garamond Lethe t c </tt> 20:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * This seems like a relatively minor wording preference to me, and not really a change of meaning (generalizations become false when something true in one context is not true in another). We also do not have to use only the words found in sources of course, and I hope you do not mean to imply that. But anyway, I have no particular problem replacing "context" for something more clear, and indeed I can see that it is not ideal. (Like I said above, it was a quick patch.) Any proposals?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:40, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't know enough about the term yet to make a proposal. I'll keep digging.  You're welcome to add any sources you know of above.  It's an interesting topic.  <tt>Garamond Lethe t c </tt> 23:23, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * If you get to it before I do, could you check out the old (public domain) Encyclopedia Britannica and see if it has anything we could use? And just so there are no surprises later, I'm not digging up all of these cites just for the lead.  I expect (some) of them will be used throughout the article, and I'm hoping to do that writing in collaboration with you.  <tt>Garamond Lethe t c </tt> 06:00, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes I also find it an interesting topic (maybe not the idola fori so much as the other idola mentis), and one I've thought of spending more time on one day. Just FYI I am having a bit of a busy week, but I will try. I have some works on Bacon and some familiarity but just as a first impression, the idola fori is one that commentators seem to find least interesting and original. (Which is also perhaps reflected in what your sources above say.) Nevertheless I think it is clear that the rhetoric, and the way it was applied to scholastic philosophy, was an inspiration to for example Hobbes, who wrote his famous metaphor with the birds trapped in the church. In effect the early moderns were wrapping the scholastics over the knuckles for sloppy work.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe first a comment: EB is obviously a tertiary source so maybe not perfect, but I do appreciate it can help structure further research, and anyway we are starting from a pretty bare article. Anyway, here is one searchable version which gives some leads, but maybe not so useful:
 * Fallacy. Basically just confirms that the idola can be considered fallacies.
 * Francis Bacon. Categorizes the idola fori as one of two of the idola which is not innate. The definition is not in my opinion particularly useful on the point you raise about "context": errors arising from the influence exercised over the mind by mere words. In other words, this just blames "words" and does not explain what it is about words.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:21, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If we are going to look at generalist sources I might as well mention that:
 * Merriam Webster at least gives us a source that confirms English versions, "idols of the forum" and "idols of the market". This in turn leads to this which gives the unhelpful idola due to human factors (as language). (Idolum being a false form of thinking.) Not very useful IMHO.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:28, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Good stuff! Fowler gives it an entry in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (which is very Fowleresque).  Will transcribe it when I get a moment.  I'm busy as well for the next couple of days, but hope to return with a few more good cites tomorrow evening.  <tt>Garamond Lethe t c </tt> 18:53, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * On rereading Mott, I notice he's anthropomorphizing the idols. I haven't noticed anyone else doing that.  Not bad or good, just different.  <tt>Garamond Lethe t c </tt> 02:56, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I also noticed it. But I think if we wrote that way we might confuse readers, and I do not see that it is the common understanding. Bacon does not do it. As I think the EB notes, Bacon seems to be deliberately echoing Plato with the word "idolum" (Latinized Greek).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:40, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Nice work on cleaning up the sources. I have a few more to add when I get a free moment today. Will look at the rest of your comments then. <tt>Garamond Lethe t c </tt> 16:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)