Abstract EN:

In England the dawn of the "Scientific Revolution" coincided with the Renaissance. It is therefore no accident that dramatists like Marlowe and Shakespeare seized on the figure of the "scientist" in Doctor Faustus and The Tempest. Science is even more present a theme in Bacon's works : in New Atlantis he describes an ideal society whose prosperity and comfort depend on a scientific institution which he calls the "House of Salomon. " The "scientist" was certainly not a "natural" feature of the social or cultural environment. One may say, however, that "natural philosophers", as they were sometimes called, shared a number of common characteristics. While still very much influenced by the humanist tradition, they expressed a very strong interest in technology. They also believed in magic and tried to legitimize its use in the face of the theologians' strictures. All three aspects – humanism, magic and technology – found their way into Doctor Faustus and The Tempest. On the whole, the popular image of the scientist was poised between rejection and mockery. He was seen either as a dangerous atheist or as a melancholy man detached from reality. Yet the literary depiction of the scientist was by no means a uniform one. Scientific treatises reveal the scientists' growing sense that they belonged to a learned community. They stopped emphasizing their isolation and gave prominence to their links with other scientists. Science remained an ambivalent pursuit until the end of the period. Bacon's enthusiasm is profoundly at odds with Shakespeare's or Marlowe's more ambivalent depiction which prefigures the later literary representations of science as a potentially destructive activity.