Francis Bacon

The trunk in a lab coat. Bacon takes Plato’s knowing few and re-dresses them as a fraternity of scientists who decide what the public may know.¹

Documented core

In New Atlantis (1627) the island of Bensalem is administered by Salomon’s House, a fraternity of philosopher-scientists. Its head describes their practice in words worth quoting exactly: “we take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret.” The elect decides what the public may know. The Royal Society, founded a generation later, took the fable as a working ideal; the robes became lab coats and the structure held.

Role in the thesis

The bridge from the ancient guardian doctrine to its modern, scientific-managerial form — cited as a published text, never as a hidden hand. That later institutions read Bacon and adopted his ideal is documented influence, and it is the ordinary way a doctrine travels.

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1. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627) — Salomon's House and its oath of secrecy 'for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret' ↩︎

Referenced by. Where this entry is cited in the reading — hover any to read it in place.

• Two Testimonies — “Bacon supplies the scientific remake.”
• The Administrators — “Two millennia later, Bacon's New Atlantis gives the scientific version: Bensalem is administered by "Salomon's House," a fraternity of philosopher-scientists who decide "which [discoveries] to publish and which not.”
• The Trunk — “Bacon supplies the scientific remake.”