Five Modern Age Utopias
How Conceptualizations of Reality Shape Visions of an Ideal World
Jul 28, 2009
Utopias always reflect contemporary conceptualizations of reality. As such, utopias over time have been set in various frameworks. Examples of these include utopias depicting a mythical past (Hesiod’s golden age of men); an ideal state modeled after the perfect and eternal form of a city (Plato’s Republic); a Christian heavenly other world (Augustine’s City of God); or an idyllic locale such as a lost land or remote island (Atlantis and Islands of the Blest).
In the modern era, utopias reflect the changing notions of reality brought on by the Scientific Revolution. From the Christian dominated world-view at the beginning of the modern era to the Newtonian clockwork universe, the idea of a Law of Progress, Hegel’s Dialectic and the discoveries of twentieth-century physics, science has reshaped how people see the world. This changing conceptualization of reality is reflected in utopian visions from More to J. D. Bernal in the 1920s.
The Geographical Enclave of Thomas More’s Utopia
The modern utopia emerged with Thomas More in 1516. Modeled after Plato’s Republic and echoing Augustine’s dualistic scheme in City of God, it is a vision informed both by Christian humanism as well as by the recent discoveries of the Americas. Depicting a highly static and hierarchical island society ruled by a paternal order of elders, More’s is a vision which mirrors the Christian scheme of reality. In this framework to be means to belong to a specific order with God at the head of all.
Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and the Interpenetration of Religion and Science
Like More’s Utopia, New Atlantis is informed by recent geographical discoveries in the New World. Its scheme is still very rigid with a paternalistic priesthood controlling all activity in a static world. But Bacon’s priests are also scientists. Bacon’s utopia is the first to give primacy to the scientific world view. Here Bacon presages developments in science such as submarines, airplanes, and the bioengineering of species, all intended to improve the lot of human kind.
Condorcet’s Enlightenment Ideal in the "Tenth Epoch " of Man
In Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind, Enlightenment thinker, Jean-Antoine-Nicholas-Caritat, marquis de Condorcet predicts nothing less than the infinite perfectibility of human kind. Informed by a new faith in the law of progress, and seeing reality as a cumulative historical process whereby the human species has progressively improved, Condorcet, like Bacon, imagines a future in which science will support the betterment of both the environment and human kind itself.
A Romantic Retreat to the Past and the End of History in News From Nowhere
The nineteenth century saw a Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment empirical view of reality, giving birth to utopian visions which harked back to a simpler past. Among the most notable is William Morris’s News From Nowhere, set in England after a Socialist Revolution in the future. Morris’s is an idealized agrarian society modeled after the medieval guild system where work is meaningful, health and leisure are prime values, and beauty a part of everyday reality.
Science and Technology in J. D. Bernal’s The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
The Romantic era could not escape the advance of science however. In the 1920s, physicist J. D. Bernal wrote what would become a prototype scientific utopia for the twentieth century. The abandonment of earth by a transcendent humanity; the mining and colonization of space; the decorporealization of humans and immortality: the big themes of later science fiction are all here. With this work, science fiction becomes heir to the utopian tradition.
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