Bacon’s utopia authorized the manipulation of living organisms for experimental gain
Evidence
Rather than respecting the beauty of existing organisms, Bacon’s New Atlantis advocated the creation of new ones: … We have also large and various orchards and gardens, wherein we do not so much respect beauty as variety of ground and soil, proper for diverse trees and herbs… . And we make (by art) in the same orchards and gardens, trees and flowers to come earlier or later than their seasons, and to come up and bear more speedily than by their natural course they do. We make them by art greater much than their nature, and their fruit greater and sweeter and of differing taste, smell, color, and figure, from their nature. … That such experimentation on animals and the creation of new species was ultimately directed toward human beings was intimated by Bacon: “We have also parks and enclosures of all sorts of beasts and birds, which we use not only for view or rareness but likewise for dissections and trials, that thereby we may take light [i.e., enlightenment] what may be wrought upon the body of man… . We also try all poisons and other medicines upon them as well of chirurgery as physic.” — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 732
Categorization
- XREF: Directly pays off the earlier chapter claim ‘Bacon explicitly outlined engineering artificial plant and animal species’ — this quotation supplies the textual evidence. — connects to: The organic utopias opposed Bacon’s exploitative science by observing and emulating nature — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 389; Bacon welded natural magic, mining, and patriarchy into an ethic of nature exploitation. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 656; Bacon’s program framed nature as a slave to be bound and constrained by science. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 670 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Skinner’s utopia rested on treating humans as engineered organisms
#corroborates(0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1185 - Bacon grounded his entire philosophical project in achieving practical mastery over nature
#expands(0.80) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 1994 - Animal exploitation historically preceded and models human manipulation.
#qualifies(0.75) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 417