New Atlantis

A ship lost in the Pacific Ocean reaches an unknown island called Bensalem, where the sailors find a peaceful, Christian and well-governed people. Their greatest institution is Salomon's House, a college of scholars who study nature by experiment: they have towers for observing the weather, deep caves for preserving things, new metals and medicines, instruments for seeing small and distant things, engines that imitate the flight of birds and boats that travel under water, all devoted to 'the enlarging of the bounds of human empire'.

Francis Bacon left this short utopia unfinished, and it was published in 1627, a year after his death. Its picture of organised scientific research inspired the founders of the Royal Society in London in 1660. Compare Thomas More's Utopia, and read Bacon's Novum Organum.