ABSTRACT
To some scholars, Francis Bacon's writings have represented progress for humanity through science and technology. To others, his rhetoric has been problematical from the perspectives of women and the environment. Bacon's life and work spanned the period in which science, technology, and mercantile capitalism conjoined with religion to make possible a new form of knowledge in the service of humankind. Della Porta's Natural Magic, or the Secrets and Miracles of Nature provided numerous examples of "transformations" for the "scientists" of Bacon's "New Atlantis" that would inspire his followers. Bacon's rhetoric about the constraint of nature sets up the ideal of a new experimental science in controlled conditions that can be witnessed, replicated, and verified by any observer. The experimental method that Bacon's work inspired depends on a set of isolated, constrained operations in confined, controlled spaces that can be witnessed, recreated, and repeated at any subsequent time and place.
