New Atlantis is an incomplete novel written by scientist and scholar Francis Bacon. Left unfinished, it was published posthumously in 1626 within a much longer text on natural history, Sylva Sylvarum. The official title is New Atlantis: A Worke Unfinished written by the Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam, Viscount St Alban and takes the form of a utopian fable that purports to follow a voyage of discovery to an island in the Pacific Ocean.
Bacon was generally a scholarly writer who composed works in Latin to be read only by fellow scholars or well-educated people. New Atlantis was intended for a more general audience and is written in English in the style of one of the most popular genres of the era, the travel narrative. Bacon’s utopian vision is most singular for the way that its perfect society is structured. Rather than legislating an ideal society as proposed by the two most famous works preceding it – Plato’s Republic and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia – Bacon’s fictional concept arises from an intellectual collaboration between faith and science. The central governing body is a realization of this spirit of cooperation: Salomon’s House, named in honor of the wise Hebrew king, is the name given to a scientific study charged with leaving the island every twelve years to bring back new information uncovered by all nations in the form of books, instruments, and patterns. An essential component to the process of the scientists engaged at Salomon’s House is that the actual institution is isolated from the rest of the community on the island.
In the narrative, the isolation of intellectual study allows for the transfer and collation of knowledge without the interference of bias, opinion, or agendas of any kind. This vital requirement for Baconian utopianism also nods toward his refutation of his predecessors: by insisting upon the possibility of science to guide utopian ideals into utopian practices, Bacon effectively rejects the premise that such ideals can only be legislated into practice. Thus, Bacon's utopian vision is one that ultimately challenges the concept of government as a guiding force (as he replaces it with science and the acquisition of knowledge), rejecting authoritarianism as a phenomenon more prone to dystopian devolution.
