The Relationship Between the State and Salomon's House in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis

Abstract

Over the past century we have witnessed and benefitted from a technological boom. Issues ranging from how science should progress to how it should be used continually gain prominence in public debates. This raises the question: what is the ideal relationship between the state and the scientific institutions? I attempt to explain how Francis Bacon, one of the founders of the modern era, answers this with his New Atlantis. Bacon’s realpolitik nature allows the New Atlantis to achieve what very few utopias can, actualization. By looking at New Atlantis’s fictionalized country, Bensalem, we can see Bacon’s ideal relationship between the scientific institution (Salomon’s House) and the state. First, I examine the state and Salomon’s House independently of each other, and then how they interact. Eventually, Bacon shows us that a strong and independent scientific institution is necessary to establish perpetuity to a well ordered state.