Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- 8 Understanding misunderstandings The intergenerational transmission of ideas and the time–factor
- 9 Contracts and traps Bacon's contract of error and the notion of pure misunderstanding
- 10 On the misuse of language Ordinary language, formalism and the false–security pitfall
- 11 Errors and illusions Francis Bacon on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 12 The protection of belief Pure misunderstanding as the result of theoretical akrasia
- 13 On misunderstanding Malthus The reception of the Essay on Population: critics and supporters
- 14 Ideas into Politics, I The transmission of abstract thought: three levels of exchange
- 15 Ideas into politics, II Sweeping claims, the philosopher–king and pure misunderstandings
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Contracts and traps Bacon's contract of error and the notion of pure misunderstanding
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- 8 Understanding misunderstandings The intergenerational transmission of ideas and the time–factor
- 9 Contracts and traps Bacon's contract of error and the notion of pure misunderstanding
- 10 On the misuse of language Ordinary language, formalism and the false–security pitfall
- 11 Errors and illusions Francis Bacon on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 12 The protection of belief Pure misunderstanding as the result of theoretical akrasia
- 13 On misunderstanding Malthus The reception of the Essay on Population: critics and supporters
- 14 Ideas into Politics, I The transmission of abstract thought: three levels of exchange
- 15 Ideas into politics, II Sweeping claims, the philosopher–king and pure misunderstandings
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The time–factor in the appropriation of works and intellectual traditions is not, certainly, the only reason why ideas may elude their original spokesmen and eventually thwart the intentions of those who did their best to make them public. The commerce between minds belonging to the same generation is also liable to go astray, giving rise to peculiar outcomes (‘externalities’) in the transmission of ideas. As it will be seen in this chapter, the ‘entropy of information’ – the tendency of messages to gradually lose their original content and dissipate as they are transmitted from one person to the next – has been the subject of detailed research in modern experimental psychology.
As Francis Bacon had already noticed early in the seventeenth century (his own experience as an author no doubt contributing to the conclusion), ‘it is not a thing so easy as is conceived to convey the conceit of one man's mind into the mind of another without loss or mistaking, specially in notions new and differing from those that are received’. The transmission of ideas through language is usually accompanied by a certain loss or dissipation of the information they contain. In a very few cases (e.g. in the example which opens chapter 8), it is true, authors do come to believe that the content of their work has been enhanced, even in their own eyes, by a particularly careful and empathetic reader.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Beliefs in ActionEconomic Philosophy and Social Change, pp. 133 - 139Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991