Francis Bacon is held in low esteem these days, at least in certain quarters. To hear some folks tell it, the "relief of man's estate" that he advocated was a colossal blunder on society's part. We may yet survive the attempt, but things are still looking pretty dicey. Feh.

Bacon was a brilliant man, as I hope to demonstrate. If "The New Atlantis" shows a certain hopeful political naivete, I think we can well afford to forgive him. Were he alive today, I believe that he could swot up on public choice theory in no time. Throw in some Hayek and Darwin while we're at it. I'm confident he could handle it. For that matter, so could Franklin or Jefferson.

More than once I have heard the base canard that our current level of technical achievement would be incomprehensible to our ancestors, poor ignorant saps that they were. Nonsense. While many of our ancestors might find our modern world problematic, others wouldn't have much difficulty adapting at all. Framed correctly, explanations could be crafted to suit the needs of even the meanest, most ignorant peasant. So let's just forget about those folks, okay?

At least a few scholars, Bacon among them, could clearly see where the wind was blowing us.

"The New Atlantis" was published in 1627. In it, Bacon dreamed big dreams about the possibilities that natural philosophy was opening up. Submarines, flying machines, devices of communication and illusion, all are crammed in there, along with so very much more. I'm presenting you with some of his more "modern" fancies. Considering it's been 378 years, he comes off pretty well.

"...I will give thee the greatest jewel I have. For I will impart unto thee, for the love of God and men, a relation of the true state of Salomon's House..."The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible...

"We have...fair and large baths...for the cure of diseases, and the restoring of man's body from arefaction; and others for the confirming of it in strength of sinews, vital parts, and the very juice and substance of the body.

"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 divers trees and herbs...

In these we practise likewise all conclusions of grafting, and inoculating...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...

We make them also by art greater much than their nature; and their fruit greater and sweeter, and of differing taste, smell, color...

"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 may take light what may be wrought upon the body of man...

We find means to make commixtures and copulations of divers kinds, which have produced many new kinds, and them not barren, as the general opinion is...Neither do we this by chance, but we know beforehand of what matter and commixture, what kind of those creatures will arise.

"We have also perspective houses, where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations and of all colors; and out of things uncolored and transparent we can represent unto you all several colors, not in rainbows, as it is in gems and prisms, but of themselves single.

We find also divers means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light...

We have also helps for the sight far above spectacles and glasses in use; we have also glasses and means to see small and minute bodies, perfectly and distinctly...

"We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmony which you have not...Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have...

We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly; we have also divers strange and artificial echoes...and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper...

We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.

"We have also perfume-houses, wherewith we join also practices of taste. We multiply smells which may seem strange...

"We have also engine-houses, where are prepared engines and instruments for all sorts of motions.

There we imitate and practise to make swifter motions than any you have, either out of your muskets or any engine that you have; and to make them and multiply them more easily and with small force...and to make them stronger and more violent than yours are...

We imitate also flights of birds; we have some degrees of flying in the air.

We have ships and boats for going under water and brooking of seas...We have divers curious clocks and other like motions of return, and some perpetual motions...

"We have also houses of deceits of the senses, where we represent all manner of feats of juggling, false apparitions, impostures and illusions, and their fallacies.

And surely you will easily believe that we, that have so many things truly natural which induce admiration, could in a world of particulars deceive the senses if we would disguise those things, and labor to make them more miraculous. But we do hate all impostures and lies...

"These are, my son, the riches of Salomon's House.

Utterly fanciful notions, aren't they? Medicine that works. Powerful engines of creation and destruction. Realistic visual and auditory media. The manipulation of living things and their heredity, an early (to say the least) vision of biotechnology.

Some of these dreams have a long and distinguished ancestry. I imagine that humans have been envying the birds for over a hundred thousand years. Gilgamesh sought a magical plant to cure his own mortality. Hephaestus designed and built bronze automata for himself and others. Humans have always wished for powerful magic, usually to no avail. What makes Bacon so interesting is that he could see such things were at last becoming possible.

Perceptive men of the seventeenth century could discern the signs of change all around them. Circumstances were altering in unprecedented ways, and the old wisdom seemed to have less and less relevance. Plainly, the rate of change was increasing. What might not be achievable, given enough time? How it must have frustrated them.

As Ben Franklin famously observed in a letter to Joseph Priestly...

The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labour & double its Produce. All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard...

Such a sensible man. True, he was writing in 1780, not the 1620's, but that earlier century had its own bumper crop of prophetic developments. Joel Mokyr had this to say...

If inventions were dated according to the first time they occurred to anyone, rather than the first time they were actually constructed, this period [1500-1750] may indeed be regarded as just as creative as the Industrial Revolution.

But the paddle-wheel boats, calculating machines, parachutes, fountain pens, steam-operated wheels, power looms, and ball bearings envisaged in this age—interesting as they are to the historian of ideas—had no economic impact because they could not be made practical.

The paradigmatic inventor of this period was the Dutch-born engineer Cornelis Drebbel...whose main claim to fame rests on a demonstration of the idea of the submarine in 1624, two-and-a-half centuries before submarines became practicable.

Again, how very frustrating that must have been. To see the possibilities so clearly, yet not be able to do anything about it. I feel for them, I truly do. Here's more Ben Franklin...

London, April 1773.

To Jacques Dubourg.

Your observations on the causes of death, and the experiments which you propose for recalling to life those who appear to be killed by lightning, demonstrate equally your sagacity and your humanity. It appears that the doctrine of life and death in general is yet but little understood...

I wish it were possible... to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But... in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection...

I am, etc.

B. FRANKLIN.

I know the feeling. Still, we can only do what we can do. Mr. Bacon gets the last word, and I think it should be carved in stone somewhere as a mission statement...

"The knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible..."