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Bacon's Allegory of Science: <I>The Theater of the New Atlantis</I>

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Bacon's Allegory of Science: <I>The Theater of the New Atlantis</I> Quidditas Volume 4 Article 11 1983 Bacon's Allegory of Science: The Theater of the New Atlantis Patricia Demers University of Alberta Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Renaissance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Demers, Patricia (1983) "Bacon's Allegory of Science: The Theater of the New Atlantis," Quidditas: Vol. 4 , Article 11. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol4/iss1/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quidditas by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Bacon's Allegory of Science: The Theater of the New Atlantis by Patricia Demers University of Alberto I conceive that I perform the office of a true priest of the sense (from which all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless men mean to go mad) and a not unskilful interpreter of its ora­ cles. ("The Plan of the Work," The Great h1stau­ ratio11) Dramatic poesy among the ancients . bas been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind of musician's bow by which men's minds may be played upon. (Tra11slatio11 of the 'Ve Augmentis," The Sec­ ond Book)' The ass ssment of Bacon's New Atlantis has long been a vexing critical problem-and with good reason. An incomplete work probably begun in 1623, when Bacon's hopes of shoring up his disgraced reputation by being appointed Provost of Eton and establishing a research institute there were high, New Atlantis is cited by various commentators as the final corrobora­ tive testimony in their views of the man. lf Bacon is merely the pragmatic materialist, censorious statesman or technocratic spokesman, then critical observations on NewAtlallfis may be seen to be tailored to suit an instruc• tive fable about scientilk advances which can, however, reveal Verulam's legalistic reliance on the world-as-it-is,• his divorce of science from po-- 'The Work8 ofFrancis Baco11, In Fifteen Volumes, ed. J. Spedding, .R. L. Ells, D. D . Heath (London: Longman and Company, 1857-74), VDI, 44; vm. 441. Subsequent guotalforu from Bacon'• works will be based on this edition. 'Sidney Warhaft, "Bacon and the Renaissance Ideal of Self-Knowledge." Pemma/1,14 44 (1964), 451-71. 136 The Theater of the ew Atlantis etry,• his addiction to superstitious habits of mind and his lack of foresight about the social responsibilities of scientific autonomy.• On the whole these views categorize Bacon either as an ambitious but prosaic litcralist or as a skilful logician who unfortunately missed the crucial point. Two critical comments might summarize neatly. For Marjorie Hope icolson, studying "The EIFect of the • ew Science' pon venteenth-Century Poetry," Francis Bacon shows "his usual prosaic common sense: ·• she examine and generally commends Bacon's "Art of Discour e," Li a Jar­ dine regrets that this gifted writer treated "systematic experimenting as sub idiary" and thereby dismissed "as secondary and provisional much of what we now regard as science."• Another and, in most instances, more recent view of Bacon insists on his primacy as a prophet and poet of hitherto neglected or maligned talents. An inspiring model for The Royal Society,' Francis Bacon has been hailed as a reformer8 who, in elevating the pursuit of continuing experiment, contributed to "a new ideal of man."• ot only was Bacon prescient in eparating science from politics, but he was also \villing to o!Fer his "idealist poetics . in the ervice of science." 10 he was prized by Shelley, Lord Bacon was a poet; although this statesman clung to peculiar, sometimes erron ou theories, he a.Isa distinguished his voluminous labour with reHective, though not always consistent, utterance . 11 Mary He e has recogniz d that, despite the nu­ merous 0aws in Bacon's thinking, he did visualize the structure of scien­ 1 tific laws and support "a method of systematic analogy." 1 Jonathan Cohen 'LC. Knights, "Bacon and the Seventeenth-Century Dissociation of Sensibility," Exp/om­ /ions: Essa11s m Criticism Mainly on the Llterotum of the Seventeenth Centu'JI (Middlesex: Penguin, I 946). 'Robert P. Adarru, '"!'he Social Responsibilities or Science in Utopia, New At/011/1$ and After,"/H/, 10 (1949), 393;Judah Bierman,·· ew Atlantis Revisited," Studiu/11 theLIIBm'JI lmoginotlon, 4 (1971 ), 137; Loren Eiseley, Fmnc/s Bacon and thtJ Mod11m Dllsmmo (Un­ coln: Uruversity or ebraslca Pr-, 1962), p. 67 'The Brmklng of the Clrr:le: Studio In the Efft!Ct oftl,s "New SclcnCI!" Upon Sswmtstmth­ Century P«try, Revised Edition 'ew York: Columbia University Pr , 1960), p. 8. 'Francis Bacon Dlxooery and the Art of Discount! (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 149. 'Margery Purver, ThtJ Royal Socielfl· Concept and Crmtlon (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967). 'Marie Boos Hall, ··tn Defense of Bacon"s Views on the Reform of Science," Penono/ist, 44 (1964), 436-53. 'Moody E. Prior, "Bacon's Man of Science," /HI, 15 (1954), 365. 0 ' E. P. McCreary, "Bacon's Theory or the Imagination Reconsidered," HLQ, 36 (1973), 328. "John L Harrison, "Bacon's View or Rhetoric, Poelry, and the Imagination," HLQ, 20 (1957), 107-25; Walter R. Davis, '"!'he Imagery or Bacon's Late Work," MLQ, 27 (1966), 162-73. ""Francu Bacon's Philosophy or Science" in Esser1t10/ Articles for thtJ Study of Fmncls Bacon, ed. B. Vickers (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1968), p. 138. Patricia Demers 137 has gone as far as to claim that laws established by Baconian induction can indeed .. constitute a pyramid of increasing probability."" Especially as a schematic, assertive writer, Bacon was a consummate artist who, as Brian Vickers describes him, was "incapable of writing on any topic for long without using metaphor." 14 Moreover, Vickers has hown very convinc­ ingly how this metaphorical penchant enabled Bacon to write with ·•no animus towards the theatre."" One of the best of the modem readers of Bacon is Michael Hattaway who defends "the interpenetration of the physical and the metaphysical in Bacon's method."'" For Hattaway Bacon is a genuine composite: a modem synthesizer who shows traces of a medi­ eval encyclopaedist, the delineator of an ordered universe who is also given to probing, non-mechanical aphorisms. Bacon's chaplain was the 6rst editor of New Atlantis: William Rawley called it a .. fable" which instructed by means of the .. model or description of a college." Later analysts have called it a "mythic parable,"" a "speculative myth,"18 or a "utopia of science."'" Without wishing to add to taxonomic confusion this reading focusses on the poetic expressiveness and dramatic capacitie which Bacon used in designing ew Atlantis. His imaginative Janus was forever active. While the forthright prophet­ prie t interpreted the oracle of the future, the eulogist of classical drama bemoaned the "toys" of the present in favour of the educating mu ician­ ship of the past. ln fact, such a priest would likely balk at the musician's role about to be sugge ted for him in ew Atlantis. Idle and light wits usually corrupt allegory, he charged, and drama is more effective in open• ing men's minds "to impressions and affections when many are gathered together than when they are alone."20 Where does this leave the solitary reader of ew Atlantis who sees in it a theater for the presentation of an allegory of science? Bacon would no doubt remind his reader that '"all the received systems are but so many stageplays, representing the worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion,"21 and dismiss the per istent allegorist into a limbo with other victims of the idols of the Theatre. Yet because Bacon was enough of an artist and a potential musi­ cian, he might also linger awhile to hear hi own reviews. ""'Som Historical Remarks on the Baconian Conception or Probability,'" JIii, 41 (1980), 220. "Franc,s Bacon and Re,1a,ssan~ Prose (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1968), p. 50. ""'Bacon's Use or Theatrical Imagery," Studies In Ilia Lilero'IJ lmaglnallan, 4 (1971), 226. ""Bacon and 'Knowledge Broken': Limits for Scienti&c Method,'" /HI, 39 (1978), 192. "McCreary, "Bacon's Theory or Imagination Reconsidered,'" 325. "Bierman, ·· cw Atlantis Re,isitcd,"" 131. ,.Judah Bierman, "The Nt!w Allan/ls, Bacon's Utopia or Science,'" Papen 011 Language and Literotu~. 3 (1967), 99-110. ' 0 Tron m/1011 af 11,e "O,, Augmenlis," Book 11 , Chapter xiii, Ill. 441-2. "Trans/al/an of !he Nocum Organum, Aphorism XLJV, VIII. 78 . • 138 The Theater of the New Atlantis Bacon has constructed NewAtlo11tis with remarkable dramatic artistry. After painting in the backdrop and scene with words, this schematic interpreter frequently proceeds to shape his scene into an icon, fabulous and allusive at once, and then reanimates this crystalline moment by lifting yet another veil and beginning anew. In this way New Atlo11tis mirrors the very approach of ordering, axiomizing and recreating that Bacon hoped to introduce to science. Like the industrious but transform­ ing bee,•• he is never content, ant-like, to collect mere scenes, or to spread spidery webs of reason about them to Batter himself. With each scene or movement he is always passing beyond and moving ahead. While the arrangement of the e scenes often suggests a "superficially ordered" argu­ ment, their connection with one another is, as Angus Fletcher has ob­ served, "to a high degree magical." .. In addition, there are many advantages to examining magical relation­ ships over totting up the depressingly impersonal features of a scientific utopia Tracing the ••figurative geometry"24 of allegory in the scenes of the work provides a more constructive way of assessing Bacon's matter than listing the differences between the Bensalemites and us, which viewing the narrative as an arid utopia of science encourages the reader to do.
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