When Bacon lists his mental impediments to truth, he includes both the Idols of the Tribe and Cave (or Den in some translations). These are the errors and misconceptions contained in the human state, either shared with everyone (the tribe) or unique to oneself (the cave). His words echoed Plato (Bacon regarded the time of the Ancient Greeks as one of the few times where societal progress had been made), who almost 2000 years earlier had described the majority of humanity as prisoners in a cave who regarded shadows as reality. Plato included this Allegory of the Cave in The Republic to describe the state of the unenlightened human race. The 2000 years from Plato to Bacon were apparently not enough to correct these errors, which are in fact still relevant today.
Mumford and Sons, a British folk band, can be considered modern-day "philosophers." A popular song from their debut album is titled "The Cave":
Marcus Mumford asks someone (maybe a woman he has fallen out of favor with) to "Now let me at the truth / Which will refresh my broken mind." He seems to have realized that he has been living in a constrained (or determined) environment and that he is faced with mental impediments, both personal and societal, to the truth. When he continues, "Because I need freedom now / And I need to know how / To live my life as it's meant to be," his desire for a more enlightened life becomes clear. Surely, the metaphor of an enclosing cave is still applicable today. However, with the recent development of a philosophy of technology, the errors of the cave may have taken on a different meaning. Instead of being determined by ignorance, as was the case in Bacon's past, we are now faced with the determinisms of technology itself. The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Bacon postulated that scientific discovery would get rid of the Idols, but they seem to have resurfaced. Is there a middle ground? Will we ever be "refreshed"?
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