Plato vs Bacon

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews the books "The Allegory of the Cave" by Plato and the "Four Idols" by Francis Bacon. This paper supplies a concise overview of each and then explores the thoughts of the two authors and highlights various comparisons and differences.

Contents:
Introduction
The Allegory of the Cave and the Four Idols

From the Paper:

"Both of these philosophies may have an impact to the reader's mind on how he views knowledge and the performance of one's mind to it. In that, perception on sources of human knowledge that were suggested by Plato and Francis Bacon have sensible philosophical views and yet can create arguments upon basis on reality in a human life.
Plato has a way of explaining how the human mind acquires information and knowledge, and how it perceive things base on what it sees and hears, and not on the reality of the concepts and perceptions it holds. He used the prisoners as a symbol of how our mind works. The symbolism runs as follows.

Prisoners were chained and were not able to move their heads. Behind them were puppeteers that cast shadows of objects on the wall that are straight on the prisoners' sight. When the prisoners see a shadow on the wall, they will name the shadow with a term based on how they see the shadow. For example, the shadow casts a form of a chair. Then, the prisoners will name the shadow as a "chair". Soon, when they speak about a chair, their concept of the term is the image of the shadow and not the physical object of a chair."

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