Author Description

The New Atlantis describes a group of sailors who are lost at sea and stumble upon an unknown island called 'Bensalem' inhabited by a perfect 'utopian' civilization. They are invited to stay and learn about how this society operates. On the surface it appears clear that Bacon is attempting to present how society could be if scientific method and technological development were to be optimized to a high standard. Before Bacon's time, scientific research was somewhat haphazard and unsophisticated, it was Bacon's dream that scientists would cooperate and work to certain standards so their work could be understood and added to by other people in their day and generations to come. Bacon helped to make this revolution happen. The wording and sentence structure of The New Atlantis is similar to many alchemical manuscripts dating from the time it was written. Combined with the fact that Francis Bacon is known to have been interested in alchemy, some people believe that The New Atlantis is itself an alchemical metaphor, containing a secret meaning, hidden in some form of metaphorical code. We are told that the location of the island is 'north'. This is interestingly the same direction that is always given for Shambhala, the mythical island of immortals described in ancient Tibetan Buddhist texts and Greek mythology (the Greeks called it Hyperborea, which means 'beyond the north wind'). The Rosicrucians themselves (not to be confused with the modern fraternities who have adopted the name) were supposed to be immortal as they possessed the secret of the Philosophers' Stone (some people believe Bacon was one of them and faked his own death.) John Heydon republished the story under his own name and the title 'A Voyage to the Land of the Rosicrucians', but his version is virtually identical to the original b