Born in London, England in 1561, Francis Bacon was in many ways the epitome of the “Renaissance Man.” Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Gray’s Inn, one of the fours Inns of Court in London, he was a lawyer (barrister in English parlance), a Member of Parliament, Attorney General, and Lord Chancellor of England before he was disgraced by a scandal that landed him in the Tower of London, albeit briefly. He was a reasonably prolific author, a jurist, and a philosopher. But he is perhaps best known for the role he played during the Scientific Revolution and for his contribution to science. In fact, through works such as the Novum Organum, Bacon advocated what is often called “the scientific method” or the “Baconian method.” Bacon’s method was essentially inductive reasoning or inductive method by which one started with the “facts” or as large a body of facts as is possible and then the facts would be organized and classified and used to develop theories to explain what was being observed (review the relevant sections of Episode 5 of the A History of Science in Society series).

In 1627, Bacon published New Atlantis, a treatise (really a novel) about a group of shipwrecked sailors in a fictional place called Bensalem. Many scholars believe that Bacon wrote the book to show the potential promise of his new scientific method. Your task in this assignment is to analyze and assess the significance of Bacon’s New Atlantis. What sort of society is Bacon portraying? What is the underlying argument of the book? What connection does New Atlantis have with the Scientific Revolution itself? The text is available through the course digital reading room or you can get it online at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=2434