Primary sourceBook1902 (text written earlier)
Solomon's House
Francis Bacon · 1902 (text written earlier)
A reprint of a passage from Bacon's utopian work New Atlantis, describing the fictional research institution Solomon's House.
This is Bacon's own imagined vision of an ideal scientific institution, from his utopian work New Atlantis.
About this source
What it is
This is a text titled 'Solomon's House', credited to Francis Bacon and reprinted in Popular Science Monthly in December 1902. The passage comes from Bacon's unfinished utopian work New Atlantis and describes an imagined institution devoted to scientific research and discovery.
Why it matters
Though printed nearly three centuries after Bacon's death, the text preserves his own words imagining a society organised around the pursuit of knowledge. Solomon's House, with its laboratories, instruments, and research staff, is often seen as an early vision of a scientific research institution, showing how Bacon's ideas about organised science influenced later thinkers.
Look closer
- What does the description of 'preparations and instruments' suggest about what Bacon imagined science could achieve?
- Why might a magazine in 1902 have chosen to reprint this 1627 text?
- What parts of Bacon's imagined institution remind you of real scientific institutions today?
This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Francis Bacon on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.
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