Recommended by
- Peter Thiel: "I like the genre of past books written about the future, e.g.: Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis…" source ↗
Summary
Francis Bacon's unfinished 1627 utopian novel depicting a fictional island society, Bensalem, organised around scientific inquiry and technological progress. The island's central institution, Salomon's House (or the College of the Six Days' Work), is a state-funded research institute where teams of scientists conduct experiments in every branch of natural philosophy, aiming to 'extend the power and dominion of the human race over the universe.' New Atlantis is the foundational text of the modern research university and the template for scientific academies from the Royal Society onward.