Puffin’s Place

• Some scientist or social scientist on NPR a week or so ago—I have been distracted with real life by houseguests for the past week—has startled readers/listeners with his profound research which suggests children have a proclivity for religion because they instinctively seek answers and reasons and order in the universe.

Guess wot! If anyone read Francis Bacon any more, they would know that in his Idols of the Mind Bacon demonstrates how human beings are dominated by four idols: “To these for distinction’s sake I have assigned names,–calling the first class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.” And Idols of the Tribe refers to human beings’ longing for a first cause—the source of many religions.

Reflect on it. We all know that the baccalaureate degree has shrunk in intellectual value to a high school diploma or less from 50 years ago. Now we find “scholars” recycling ideas and claiming as their own analyses of human perceptions that were far better presented hundreds of years ago.

Rather unfortunate. And supporting my thesis that if one studied the following three works, one would be well-armed for life: Idols of the Mind, Politics and the English Language by George Orwell, and Sherwood Anderson’s Preface to Winesburg, Ohio.