The New Atlantis
Category: Kindle Store,Kindle Short Reads,90 minutes (44-64 pages)
The New Atlantis Details
The New Atlantis is a utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon. In this work, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind. The novel depicts the creation of a utopian land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of "Bensalem". The plan and organization of his ideal college, "Salomon's House" envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure sciences. Many aspects of the society and history of the island are described, such as the christian religion - which is reported to have being born there as a copy of the Bible and a letter from the Apostle Saint Bartholomew arrived there miraculously, a few years after the Ascension of Jesus; a cultural feast in honor of the family institution, called "the Feast of the Family"; a college of sages, the Salomon's House, "the very eye of the kingdom".
Reviews
English Renaissance Philosopher, Father of Empiricism, Creator of the Scientific Method, Attorney General, & Lord Chancellor of England, Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) left behind an unfinished novel (published posthumously) offerring a detailed vision of Utopia that reads like a fable, called New Atlantis. Bacon offers a vision for a society driven mainly by science and knowledge, with its only driving principle being the bettering of man’s feeble condition. To that end, Bacon redefines science as being concerned solely with “the relief of man’s estate” and not with the pursuit of truth as a good in and of itself. The moral of the story could be summarized in Bacon’s famous dictum, “knowledge is power".I would rephrase as "Knowledge is empowerment when employed for Betterment."