Religion and Francis Bacon's Scientific Utopianism

ISBN:

0591-2385

URL:

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=25511450&site=ehost-live

Keywords:

414; Epistemology; God; Learning; Religion; Science; Utopianism; BACON; FRANCIS

Abstract:

Francis Bacon often is depicted as a patriarch of modernity who promotes human rational action over faith in divine Providence and as a secular humanitarian who realized that improvement of the human condition depended on human action and not on God's saving acts in history. Bacon's New Atlantis is usually described as a "scientific utopia" because its ideal order, harmony, and prosperity are the result of the investigations of nature conducted by the members of Solomon's house. I challenge these characterizations by showing that Bacon's so-called scientific utopianism is grounded in his religious convictions that his age was one of Providential intervention and that he was God's agent for an apocalyptic transformation of the human condition. (edited)