The Quarrel Of The Ancients And Moderns In New Atlantis

The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns(1680s-1720s)was an important cultural phenomenon in the history of the West.However,Bacon’s New Atlantis(1626)as an anticipation of this Quarrel has been academically ignored.This thesis aims to interpret how Bacon quarrels,or competes,with Plato and Aristotle in his New Atlantis and offer an objective judgment of the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns embodied in this fiction.This thesis first introduces the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns,mainly in France and Britain,and points out Bacon’s role in the Quarrel.Then this thesis investigates Bacon’s quarrel with Aristotle and Plato in New Atlantis respectively.Bacon puts forward a new logical modal of scientific discovery based on empirical induction,which he firmly believes to be superior to Aristotle’s old modal based on intuitive induction and deduction.At the same time Bacon outlines the country of Bensalem as a new Atlantis,with which he tends to defeat Plato’s Atlantis in terms of politics,history and science.At last,this thesis argues for a balanced view upon the relative values of the works of Bacon,a representative of the moderns,and Plato and Aristotle,who stand for the ancients.The moderns have transcended the ancients in certain aspects,instead of defeating the latter,since they inherit and learn so much from their precursors.And the latter are not beaten as respected pathfinders.By interpreting the ignored Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns in New Atlantis,this thesis will enrich and broaden the scholarship of Bacon and New Atlantis to some extent.