Francis Bacon's New Atlantis: New interdisciplinary essays

Abstract

how the New Atlantis negotiates a variety of contexts -literary, philosophical, political, religious and social -in order to achieve this.It frequently draws on traditional modes of understanding so as to provide fresh perspectives upon them, revising and often challenging expectations.The 'in between' quality of the text is apparent in its very form.It has often been regarded as an apotheosis of the ideas outlined in Bacon's works on natural philosophy, projecting an advanced society in which 'science' is awarded central status and is subsidised by the state.4 However, the New Atlantis is also a 'fable' and Bacon's first entry into fictional writing.It draws on, mixes and reworks a range of genres, most particularly, as Paul Salzman points out in Chapter 2, the utopian fantasy and the travel narrative.It implicitly alludes to, rethinks and questions the societies represented in both Plato's Republic, Timaeus and Critias and More's Utopia (1516).5 Despite such fictional richness, however, the text is often thought to be incomplete.This is primarily the result of the Preface to the New Atlantis by William Rawley, Bacon's secretary and editor, which suggests that Bacon's original intention was 'to have composed a frame of Laws, or the best state or mould of a commonwealth', 6 and that, as Rawley notes at the end, 'The rest was not perfected' (488).However, some critics consider the New Atlantis's apparent fragmentariness to be part of its overall design: 7 its identity lies between part and whole.Significantly in this regard, Bacon's fable is appended to the much larger work of natural history, Sylva Sylvarum, which comprises a compendium of hundreds of experiments both conducted by Bacon and ones about which he had read (see Chapters 2, 3 and 5 of this volume).Though this work relates to the core of Bacon's fictional narrative -the functions, operations and instruments of Salomon's House, the scientific institution that lies at the heart of New Atlantis -it also in some senses overshadows it through its length and basis in practical science.However, as this volume demonstrates, the scientific enterprise of the New Atlantis is only one aspect of the work.Rather, Bacon's fable stands on the cusp between the fictional and factual, the visionary and practical, utopia and utility, unknown and known.It unsettles a whole range of areas central to Bacon's Bronwen

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