The utopias in this selection are isolated societies, set on remote islands or planets, and discovered by outsiders.
Thomas Campanella imagined a perfect society in which religion and reason work in total harmony.
H G Wells described a parallel earth upon which the rational and scientific are perfectly reconciled with spiritual discipline and belief.
Francis Bacon describes a remote utopian island governed entirely by reason and science.
Through encounters with a series of very different worlds, some of them the exact inverse of the other, Jonathan Swift exposes the inevitable prejudice and conflict within societies and between them.
- Why is each of these worlds set apart from our world? Why is each discovered?
- Can you imagine world without belief, based entirely on reason? Can you imagine its opposite?
- Are conflict and prejudice inevitable in a world of mixed ideas and beliefs?
La città del sole - government
La città del sole - temple (text extract)
The New Atlantis - Solomon's house
The New Atlantis - perspective houses
A map of the Houyhnhnms Land
A Modern Utopia
Science in Modern Utopia (text extract)
Religion in Modern Utopia
