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New Atlantis

Works · 1627 · documented

The fable in which the guardian doctrine puts on a lab coat.1

Documented core

The island of Bensalem is administered by Salomon’s House, a fraternity of philosopher-scientists whose spokesman states their practice plainly: they take “an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret.” The elect decides what the public may know. Founded a generation later, the Royal Society took the fable as a working ideal.

Role in the thesis

The primary the modern managerial-scientific trunk is read off — the elect re-described as expert rather than aristocrat, deciding the public’s knowledge in daylight and in print.

  1. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627) — 'we take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret' ↩︎

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  • Two Testimonies — “In New Atlantis (1627), the island of Bensalem is run by Salomon's House, a fraternity of philosopher-scientists whose 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 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 — “In New Atlantis (1627) the island of Bensalem is administered by Salomon's House, a fraternity of philosopher-scientists whose spokesman describes their practice in a line worth quoting exactly: "we take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret.”