Do Great Ideas Sink or Float?

It is commonplace to praise great ideas for having stood "the test of time." Implicit in that thought is that if an idea keeps kicking around, then it must capture some deep truth, a truth that allows it to resurface again and again in wildly different historical moments.

Francis Bacon thinks the opposite. On his view, the persistence of an idea is likely a symptom of its superficiality. It floats along the waters of time precisely because of its frivolity. Serious ideas are heavy and thus difficult to understand. So they sink down with time, rather than float along with the current.

From The Great Instauration:

"Now as far as the people are concerned, the doctrines that most flourish are either contentious and pugnacious, or bland and empty, such, that is, as either ensnare assent or win it by flattery. And therefore the greatest minds in every age have doubtless felt their force; while being men of uncommon capacity and understanding they have nonetheless, with an eye to their popular reputation, submitted to the judgement of time and of the multitude; and as a result, any more exalted reflections that may have gleamed forth were straightaway buffeted and extinguished by the winds of popular opinion. The result has been that Time, like a river, has brought down to us the light and inflated while it has sunk the weighty and solid." (Preface)

The pre-Socratics were better than Plato and Aristotle. They "did not open schools, so far as we know, but applied themselves to the search for truth more quietly, austerely and without fuss, making no great show or parade about their work. They did their work better, in my opinion, only their teachings have been obscured over the passage of time by those shallower men who pay more attention and regard to the grasp and wishes of common people. Time, like a river, brings down to us what is lighter and more puffed up, and lets the heavier, solid matters sink." (I.71)

Philosophy was corrupted after it became dominated by Plato and Aristotle. Things were fine until the fall of Rome, when Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy became dominant (I imagine he's blaming the Church for that): "It was only in still later times, with the flooding of the barbarians into the Roman Empires and the virtual shipwreck of human learning, that the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, like light and insubstantial flotsam, survived the waves of time." (I.77)

Locke on Intellectual Inheritance and Progress

From the fascinating fourteenth chapter of John Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity:

When Truths are once known to us, though by Tradition, we are apt to be favourable to our own Parts; and ascribe to our own Understandings the Discovery of what, in reality, we borrowed from others; Or, at least, finding we can prove what at first we learnt from others, we are forward to conclude it an obvious Truth, which, if we had sought, we could not have missed. Nothing seems hard to our Understandings, that is once known; And because what we see we see with our own Eyes, we are apt to over-look or forget the help we had from others, who shewed it us, and first made us see it, as if we were not at all beholden to them for those truths, which they opened the way and lead us into. For Knowledge being only of Truths that are perceived to be so, we are partial enough to our own Faculties to conclude that they of their own strength would have attained those Discoveries without any assistance from others. Knowledge is light in the mind, which we see and perceive: And whilst it is certain that they be our own eyes that see and perceive it, who shall perswade us that ours were not made and given us to find truth as well as theirs who had no other advantage but the luck to be before us? Thus the whole stock of Human Knowledge is claimed by every one, as his private Possession, as soon as he (profiting by others Discoveries) has got it into his own mind; And so it is: But not properly by his own single Industry, nor of his own Acquisition. He studies, 'tis true, and takes pains to make a progress in what others have delivered; But their pains were of another sort, who first brought those Truths to light, which he afterwards derives from them. He that Travels the Roads now, applauds his own strength and legs, that have carried him so far in such a scantling of time; And ascribes all to his own Vigor, little considering how much he owes to their pains, who cleared the Woods, drained the Bogs, built the Bridges, and made the Ways passable; without which he might have toiled much with little progress. 

A wonderful little passage.

 

John Locke and the Janitorial Theory of Philosophy

From the wonderful "Epistle to the Readers" in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity; but every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters, as the great — Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain; it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge; which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much cumbered with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree, that philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thought unfit, or uncapable to be brought into well-bred company, and polite conversation. Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning, and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade, either those who speak, or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. To break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance, will be, I suppose, some service to human understanding: though so few are apt to think they deceive or are deceived in the use of words; or that the language of the sect they are of, has any faults in it which ought to be examined or corrected; that I hope I shall be pardoned, if I have in the third book dwelt long on this subject, and endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalence of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those, who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the significancy of their expressions to be inquired into.

I take this to be a great statement of the ambition of modern philosophy. Locke apparently lowers the sights: Philosophers cannot hope to be "master builders" of human knowledge in the way the great scientists can be. The philosopher's task is merely to clear the ground of intellectual debris. But that janitorial project (clarifying some terms, making some distinctions) is soon revealed to be transformative in its own right. The goal is to do away with the prejudices and superstitions that clutter human thought. Without such a clearing, we are incapable of exercising reason or persuasion.

Sheldon Wolin has a nice reading of this section in chapter nine, part II of Politics and Vision (expanded edition).