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Science and Society in the New Atlantis and Other Renaissance Utopias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Judah Bierman
Judah Bierman*
Affiliation:
Portland State College, Portland 1, Oregon
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Extract

Though apparently only a fragment, the posthumously published New Atlantis provides insights into Bacon's idea of science not discoverable in his other works. In Salomon's House, the poet of science gave a local habitation and a name to the process and product of science, creating a concrete image of the “learning” for which he had sued so eloquently and so fruitlessly twenty years earlier before the new monarch, the learned James. Clearly an integral part of Bacon's program, in many places the New Atlantis is no less than a fictionalized paradigm of The First Book of the Advancement of Learning For example, as a correlative to the arguments by which he defended learning from the ignorant zeal of religious, political, and social fanatics, Bacon created in the New Atlantis a little world sanctified to God, politically stable, socially conservative, and morally pure and dedicated to the pursuit of science. Further, in its leading institution, the College of the Six Days Works, we find also a correlative to the criticisms of contemporary scientific practice that Bacon had offered earlier in The Advancement in his analysis of “the errors and vanities which have intervened amongst the studies themselves of the learned” and in the “peccant humours” which weaken and corrupt learning. But the New Atlantis is more than a mere paradigm: it projects an image of science in operation and of the relation of scientists to society not to be found in Bacon's earlier works. My purpose here is to explore the structure of that image, emphasizing in particular the contrast between it and the image of science projected by other Renaissance Utopias.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 1963 , pp. 492 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1963

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References

1 Assessments of Bacon's role in the rise of the idea of science are standard enough not to require broad documentation. The most frequently quoted judgments come from Basil Willey's chapter, “Bacon and the Rehabilitation of Nature,” in Seventeenth Century Background (London, 1934), and Douglas Bush's English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1945), pp. 261–268. R. F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns (St. Louis, Mo., 1936), and F. H. Anderson, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (Chicago, 1948), especially Chs. i, ii, and xxv, are important studies. Two significant articles discussing Bacon's science and scientists, with special reference to the New Atlantis, are Robert P. Adams, “The Social Responsibilities of Science in Utopia, New Atlantis and After,” JIII, x (1949), 374–398, and Moody E. Prior, “Bacon's Man of Science,” JIII, xv (1954), 348–370. Relevant also are the earlier articles by Geoffrey Bullough, “Bacon and the Defence of Learning,” and Rudolf Metz, “Bacon's Part in the Intellectual Movements of his Time,” both appearing in Seventeenth Century Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson (Oxford, 1938). See also J. G. Crowther, Francis Bacon: First Statesman of Science (London, 1960). The New Atlantis and its portrayal of science is discussed in most histories of Utopias, as noted below, passim.

2 The rest of this paragraph summarizes a detailed comparative analysis of the two works with special emphasis on the structure of the first half of the New Atlantis, to be published as “Bacon's Advancement of Learning and his Utopia of Science.”

3 The charges seem to be of two kinds. One emphasizes what Adams calls “the Baconian lust to make all knowledge man's province and the restless Baconian desire for perpetual new inventions and material improvements which go beyond what the Utopians or, we might add, any rational men regard as naturally ‘necessary’ ” (“Social Responsibility … ” JIII, x, 382). The other, also noted by Adams, raises questions about the autonomy of the scientists themselves. But on the latter question see Prior, op. cit. A typical, generally unsympathetic account is Marie Berneri's in Journey Through Utopia (London, 1950), p. 136. Richard Wahrhaft, “Science Against Man in Bacon,” Bucknell Review, VI (1957–58), 158 ff., rehashes the charges, emphasizing the inadequacy of religious control and direction.

4 For a sampling of approaches to the New Atlantis in histories of Utopias, see A. L. Morton, The English Utopia (London, 1952), p. 62: “ … New Atlantis which under cover of describing a Utopian commonwealth is really a prospectus for a state-endowed college of experimental science.” R. Ruyer, L'Utopie el les utopies (Paris, 1950), p. 173: “Bacon n'annonce pas tant une societe transformer par la science qu'une societe ou la science aura la premiere place, et la plus confortable.” See also V. Dupont, L'Utopie et le roman utopie dans la litterature anglaise (Lyons, 1941), pp. 127–154; Berneri, op. cit. supra, n.3; Frederic White, Famous Utopias of the Renaissance (New York, 1955), xxi, among others.

5 I am not, however, attempting here the same kind of analysis as that undertaken by H. S. Herbruggen in Ulopie und Anti-Utopie (Bochum-Langendreer, 1960). Dr. Herbrug-gen's structure principles, said to be common to all Utopias, include Isolation, Selektion der Krafte und Idealitat and do not refer to physical structures within the utopias themselves. I also purposely avoid any introduction of materials from the history of science at this point.

6 Burrhus F. Skinner, Walien II (New York, 1948).

7 Inasmuch as I am not concerned here with literary genetics, I avoid all questions of order of composition and influence. Also, I reserve Burton's “own utopia” for separate analysis, though its very formlessness makes it relevant here. There are complex questions of continuing additions to the text noted by J. Max Patrick in “Robert Burton's Utopianism,” PQ, xxvii (Oct. 1948), 345–358 and other, largely unnoted, relations to later Baconian utopists which make separate treatment desirable.

8 Fritz Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954), pp. 50–51. More sought to prove, Caspari points out, that “a society could be organized on the basis of reason alone, and ruled by those who possessed it in the highest degree.” Accordingly, “he eliminated … property, inherited social position and within limits revealed religion.” He created a society of rational men “to investigate how [reason] could serve as the only basis of society, without interference from any of the other factors which traditionally influenced societies.”

9 Adams, p. 380.

10 Wahrhaft, pp. 163 ff; Adams, pp. 384 ff. The critical passage on which Adams based his argument for natural science in Utopia, within his “natural-social science” formula, begins: “For thoughe there be almost no nation under heaven that hath lesse nede of Phisick than they, yet, this notwithstandying, Phisicke is no where in greater honour; bycause they count the knowledge of yt emonge the good-lieste, and mooste profytable partes of Philosophie. For whyles they by the helpe of thys Philosophie searche owte the secrete mysteryes of nature, they thynke that they not onlye receaue therby wonderfull greate pleasur, but also obteyn great thankes and fauour of the auctoure and maker thereof. Whom they thynke, accordynge to the fassyon of other artyfycers, to have sett furthe the marvelous and gorgious frame of the worlde for man to beholde; whome onelye he hathe made of wytte and capacytye to consydre and understand the excellencye of so greate a woorke. And therefore, say they, dothe he beare more good wyll and loue to the curyous and diligent beholder and vewere of his woorke, and maruelour at the same, than he doth to him, whyche lyke a very beaste wythowte wytte and reason, or as one wythowte sense or mouynge, hath no regarde to soo greate and soo wonderfull a spectacle.” The Utopia, ed. J. H. Lupton (Oxford, 1895), pp. 217–218. Subsequent references to The Utopia will be to this edition. If we follow Lupton and Adams and expand “Phisicke” to mean natural philosophy or natural science, we discover that the Utopianspursue knowledge, which is otherwise of no value to them, for the pleasure they get from knowing it and for the rewards God bestows with his love and good will when they take the effort to comprehend the curious pattern of His universe. The passage does not say that among the excellencies of “the marvellous and georgous frame of the world” is its capacity to serve as a model for human, social organization. Even more important, the passage says nothing about man taking any other action beyond beholding the frame. Further, I am indebted to R. J. Schoeck for noting that the Latin text gloss Medicina Utilissima suggests a more restricted meaning for “Phisicke.” See Adams, op. cit. pp. 377 ff., where he develops the natural-social science formula. I should like to make clear that my use of Adams' analysis as a point of departure does not imply dissent from his general position, and certainly not a failure to appreciate his contribution to the understanding of More in this and his earlier essays.

11 The three-part structure of the New Atlantis and Bacon's use of a “flash-back” technique are discussed in the essay referred to above in n. 2. More does note that Utopia was founded 1760 years earlier. The significance of the date 244 B.C. and of its use by More has been discussed in detail by R. J. Schoeck in “More, Plutarch and King Agis: Spartan History and the meaning of Utopia,” PQ, xxxv (1956), 366–375,esp.p.372.

12 See Edward Surtz, The Praise of Pleasure (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 4 and note, on More's use of the name Abraxa.

13 It is, of course, not necessary for there to be a building with a sign engraved in gold letters HOME OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN THE IDEAL STATE. My argument is simply that the lack of an organized space in Utopia is evidence of a distinction between More's advocacy of rational procedures and the more common use of “science” as a term involving laboratory or similar operations with things.

14 1 use William Gilstrap's translation, included in Glenn Negley and J. Max Patrick, The Quest for Utopia (New York, 1952), pp. 317–347. Subsequent references will be noted by page number only in the text itself. I am indebted to both authors for encouraging my interest in Utopias and to Professor Patrick for bibliographical aid.

15 Some alternative interpretations of the City of the Sun are summarized in Negley and Patrick, Quest, p. 315. See also A. D. Franck, Reformateurs et publicistes de l'Europe dix-septieme siecle (Paris, 1881), pp. 150–201, who regards the work as a reductio. On the contradictions in his works, Harold Hoffding, A History of Modern Philosophy, tr. B. E. Meyer (New York, 1900), pp. 157–158, writes: “This vision of the future which swam before Campanella … stands in a certain opposition alike to his philosophical and to the politico-religious conceptions which he developed in his other works.”

16 Johann Valentin Andreae, Christianopolis, tr. Felix E. Held (Oxford, 1916). Subsequent references will be to this edition and will be noted in the text itself.

17 Bernardus M. Bonansea discusses the relation of Cam-panella's epistemology to his metaphysics, perhaps crudely figured in the walls and the city, in The Theory of Knowledge of Thomas Campanella (Washington, D.C., 1954), Catholic Univ. of America, Phil. Ser., Abstract 14, p. 20 ff.

18 Edgar Zilsel, “The Genesis of the Concept of Scientific Progress,” JHI, VI (1945), 346, n. 5, notes the presence of museums but not of institutions for research in the City of the Sun. “Scientific progress and cooperation are not mentioned there.”

19 Concerning the adequacy and distribution of provisions from the mills and bakeries, Andreae writes (p. 152), “You will be surprised how a supply of provisions not at all very great, can be made to suffice for temperate habits in everything. For though no one in the whole island ever goes hungry, yet by the grace of God or the generosity of nature, there is always abundance, since gluttony and drunkenness are entirely unknown.”

20 See above, n. 2. Subsequent references to the New Atlantis are to the edition by J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, Works (London, 1857), and will be included in the text.

21 I consciously give Rawley's term a contemporary meaning. Utopias present models in the sense that they exhibit the possible working relations between institutions, not in the sense that they provide exhibits to scale of parts of the social structure.

22 See above, p. 496.

23 In the opening to The Second Book of The Advancement, Bacon speaks of the need for collegiate endowment, for research facilities, for readerships and lectureships, for new books and new editions of old books—all these and more in a spirit that suggests not only broad support but close integration of these new works into the educational system. He would not only introduce the new but also reform the old.

24 Concern about the autonomy is not limited to our own time. In the preface to his edition of the Works (London, 1737), Peter Shaw wrote: “Perhaps the Reserve of a Power of withholding certain discoveries from the State, though a thing in itself extremely wise and prudent (because Governors are not always good moral philosophers), may be the greatest Objection against the founding of such a college as is here modell'd out.” See articles by R. P. Adams and M. E. Prior listed in first note.

25 On the consecrated play space, see J. H. Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston, 1955), p. 10. But see also Huizinga's comments on the limited play element in science (pp. 203–204). The special place fits well with the theory of Utopian construction suggested by R. Ruyer in L'Utopie et les utopies (Paris, 1950), pp. 3–27.

26 Zilsel, p. 325.

27 I am indebted to the Charles A. Weyerhauser Memorial Foundation for an opportunity to study seventeenth-century Utopias. I note also a debt to Mr. F. M. Rarig, Jr.