New AtlantisFrancis BaconOmniClassics · Literature
New Atlantis
Francis BaconTravellers encounter an island society whose most remarkable institution organizes the pursuit and use of knowledge.
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About the book
A voyage brings the narrator and his companions to Bensalem, where hospitality is accompanied by careful control over what strangers may learn. The account gradually introduces customs, religious history, and the institution of Salomon's House, devoted to investigating nature and developing useful arts. Bacon's imagined community makes experimentation a social project supported by specialized roles, journeys, collections, and secrecy. Its inventions are less important as a checklist of predictions than as an expression of confidence in organized inquiry. The narrative remains unfinished, and the gaps leave questions about authority and the circulation of knowledge unresolved. Readers can enjoy its speculative abundance while asking who decides which discoveries should be shared, and how an ideal of public benefit relates to concentrated institutional power.
- Knowledge and experiment
- Ideal societies
- Secrecy and authority
Why read it
For a compact imagined society that makes scientific inquiry a question of institutions as well as ideas.
English text · unfinished utopian narrative