But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols
which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words
and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn
and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and
the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw
the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding.
Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation
would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words
complain.
-- Francis Bacon
