Biology Reference
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was ordained so that by his offspring “all the nations of the earth shall bless
themselves” (Genesis 18:18). Bensalem's separation, as we soon discover, has
prepared the world for a similar universal blessing. Just as Israel was set apart
as a spiritual preparation for its universal mission, Bensalem was isolated,
not to maintain the secrecy of its accomplishments, but to make science
ready for its global mission. Bensalem had been set apart from the world for
the same reason that the church was “betrothed” to Christ as a “pure bride
to her one husband” (2 Corinthians 11:2), so that it could prepare for his
final revelation. It is notable in this regard that Bacon's climactic survey of
the scientific achievements that have been wrought within Salomon's House
is immediately preceded by a discussion of the island's marriage customs.
The fact that there is “not under the heavens so chaste a nation as this of
Bensalem,” which is “the virgin of the world,” also tells us, by way of a famil-
iar pattern of biblical allegory, something vital about its scientific purity. Just
as the Bensalemites look with “wonder” and “detestation” upon the wide-
spread “concupiscence” that undermined marriage and the propagation of
children in Europe, their own intellectual chasteness, which has protected
their science from the distractions of worldly lust, was also the condition
that had made possible that fecundity which was soon to bless the world. 28
The scientific secrecy depicted in New Atlantis has puzzled many read-
ers, especially since it seems to violate the norm of open communication
that was soon to become vital for the emerging scientific culture. 29 This
is compounded by the fact that Bacon elsewhere indicts Catholic natural
philosophers for precisely this error. They were “shut up in the cells of a
few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator),” he writes in his Advancement
of Learning , just “as their persons were shut up in the cells of monaster-
ies and colleges.” This had made the scholastic doctors “fierce with dark
keeping,” as if their work had been touched by the madness that afflicts
animals left too long in darkened cages. 30 Such statements might seem to be
contradicted by the secrecy imposed by Bensalemite law, but this problem
evaporates once we recognize the author's allegorical purposes. Bacon was
not laying out a technical blueprint for institutional science; he was trying
to integrate its identity into an established pattern of spiritual and histori-
cal understanding. If natural philosophers were to be seen as God's elect, it
was also necessary that they should manifest all the traditional signs associ-
ated with the prophetic office. To the extent that separation from the world
always coincided with the obedience required of those human actors who
aspired to fulfill their elected role as partners in God's redemptive work,
Bacon needed to dramatize science's separation in some similar way.
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