{"title":"Ethics and politics in the New Atlantis","authors":"David Colclough","doi":"10.7765/9781526137388.00009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137388.00009","url":null,"abstract":"The New Atlantis is a text about natural philosophy which seems to offer connections at almost every point with moral and political philosophy. The celebrated description of Salomon’s House raises the question of the place of the scientist in society and the allusion to Plato’s Critias and Timaeus in the work’s title suggests an engagement with that philosopher’s description of the ideal state. Furthermore, a reference to More’s Utopia, together with the recognisably ‘utopian’ framework of the narrative, promises responses to other ‘best state’ exercises, perhaps including Andreae’s Christianopolis (1619) and Campanella’s Civitas Solis (1623). Bacon’s own political activities are well known, and in successive editions of the Essays, as well as in his speeches and pieces of advice, he had shown himself willing and able to treat what he considered the most pressing issues of political and ethical theory and practical negotiation. Nor was this engagement halted by Bacon’s disgrace in 1621: in the years after his fall from office, he wrote a series of works which could be read as attempts to regain favour and political influence; the New Atlantis could","PeriodicalId":277823,"journal":{"name":"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129363683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Strange things so probably told’","authors":"Kate Aughterson","doi":"10.7765/9781526137388.00013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137388.00013","url":null,"abstract":"The New Atlantis has fired the imaginations of its readers since its original appearance in 1627. Often regarded as the apotheosis of Bacon's ideas through its depiction of an advanced 'scientific' society, it is also read as a seminal work of science fiction. Standing at the threshold of early modern culture, this key text incorporates the practical and visionary, utility and utopia. This volume of eight new essays by leading scholars provides a stimulating dialogue between a range of critical perspectives. Encompassing the fields of cultural history, history of science, literature and politics, the collection explores The New Atlantis' complex location within Bacon's oeuvre and its negotiations with cultural debates of the past and present. Contributors consider the book's use of rhetoric, its narrative contexts, its political and ethical implications, its relation to the natural knowledge of the period, and the function of miracles in New Atlantan society. The politics of colonialism and Jewish toleration, its complex representation of gender, and the role and politics of censorship are also explored. This volume will be the ideal companion to Bacon's The New Atlantis and for all students of literature, politics, history, cultural history and history of science ... Bacon's complex use of the motif, metaphor, and concept of gender is the subject of Kate Aughterson's lucid discussion, which buries the tired notion that Bacon simply advocates the dominance of a masculine science or a feminine nature.","PeriodicalId":277823,"journal":{"name":"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133108216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Censorship and the institution of knowledge in Bacon’s New Atlantis","authors":"S. Wortham","doi":"10.7765/9781526137388.00014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137388.00014","url":null,"abstract":"Critical readers of Bacon’s New Atlantis have often drawn attention to the complex relationship between, on the one hand, the production and dissemination of enlightened scientific knowledge in Bensalem – and, indeed, the forms of social community for which it implicitly provides a model – and, on the other, the secret or concealed conditions of this very same process of production. For example, Robert K. Faulkner in Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress notes that, while ‘every official performs his function [and] everyone does what he is ordered,’ nevertheless ‘all this order is the more remarkable since the relation of king, city, nation, state, and scientist is not clarified. The order that orders ... is hidden.’ Jerry Weinberger, meanwhile, argues that Bensalemite ‘science is shrouded in secrecy, denying the possibility of full enlightenment.’ Such secrecy surrounding the activities which contribute to the production of scientific knowledge Weinberger reads in terms of, as he sees it, Bacon’s idea that ‘the politics of science must be secret and retired because only the most resolute souls will be willing to embrace such a world with full knowledge of its moral risks and dangers.’ What these critics would appear to suggest, then, is that the production of various sorts of ground-breaking scientific knowledge and enlightened social relationships remain dependent, at bottom, upon a supplementary dose of censorship that simply cannot be dispensed","PeriodicalId":277823,"journal":{"name":"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128234154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Persuasions to science","authors":"S. Hutton","doi":"10.7765/9781526137388.00008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137388.00008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":277823,"journal":{"name":"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121010697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the miracles in Bacon’s New Atlantis","authors":"J. Weinberger","doi":"10.7765/9781526137388.00011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137388.00011","url":null,"abstract":"Francis Bacon's New Atlantis depicts the world to be produced by his famous project for modern science and technology and the consequent mastery of nature and 'relief of man's estate'. As depicted in the New Atlantis, the modern project is crucially dependent on two fundamental miracles: the miracle of creation and the miracle of divine revelation. Divine providence assumes that the good for man is a selfish good and that even self-sacrifice is ultimately selfish. In Bensalem, what could well be a noble lie told by scientists lends scientific credence to a miracle that could have been fabricated by the scientists themselves. As Bacon says, 'God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.' In The Advancement of Learning, Bacon says that natural theology is the 'knowledge of God that can be had by contemplating God's creatures'.","PeriodicalId":277823,"journal":{"name":"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121297551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Natural knowledge in the New Atlantis","authors":"R. Serjeantson","doi":"10.7765/9781526137388.00010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137388.00010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":277823,"journal":{"name":"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123334489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"’Books will speak plain’?","authors":"C. Jowitt","doi":"10.7765/9781526137388.00012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137388.00012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":277823,"journal":{"name":"Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis","volume":"140 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131949012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}