Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 06 – 30
The epistemological distortion identified by Bacon in Aphorism I:45 of the Novum Organum (1620)—the tendency of the human mind to impose order and correspondence where none existed—has numerous modern analogues. In theoretical physics, critics have argued that some highly mathematical theories risk allowing formal elegance and symmetry to outrun empirical testability. String theory has often been cited in this context. In economics, highly idealized models based on perfectly rational agents and equilibrium systems similarly project artificial regularities onto complex realities. In the social sciences, overgeneralized applications of Darwinian principles or retrospective “just-so stories” serve as cautionary instances of conceptual overreach. Even in popular culture, this cognitive bias is visible: examples include the widespread reports of seeing the face of Jesus in toasted bread or Khomeini’s face on the moon. These cases—known as pareidolia—illustrate the human tendency to perceive symbolic or culturally significant forms in otherwise meaningless stimuli. Whether in high theory or everyday perception, the human mind remains predisposed to fabricate structure, analogy, and harmony beyond what the evidence warrants—just as Bacon observed.
Bacon, F. (1620) Novum Organum, Aphorism I-XLV (1:45)
The human intellect, by its very nature, readily presumes a greater degree of order and uniformity in things than it actually discovers. Even though many entities in nature are singular and marked by inequality, they nonetheless constructs imagined parallels, analogies, and relations where none exist. Hence the fictions that, in the heavens, all things move in perfect circles, while spiral paths and “dragons” are altogether dismissed, except in name. Hence, too, the element of fire, together with its celestial sphere, was introduced to complete a quartet with the three others perceptible to the senses. Moreover, a tenfold ratio in rarity is arbitrarily imposed among the so-called elements. And such dreams not only infect dogmatic systems, but also corrupt the very simplest notions.
Hossein Jorjani 