Utopia and Dystopia

Thomas More (1478–1535) was born in London on February 7 and executed on Tower Hill, London on July 6. He was a lawyer and royal councilor who rose to be Lord Chancellor of England (1529–1532) before falling afoul of Henry VIII over the matter of the king's divorce. Of his voluminous writings, the only one that has anything to say about science and technology is Utopia (1516), his vastly influential Latin book about an imaginary island republic somewhere off South America.

To More and those of his fellow humanists who understood the Greek etymology, of the word that he coined for this title utopia meant simply noplace (ou + topos): the word, that is, did not originally have the meaning—an ideal society, or a fictional work about one—acquired in the book's aftermath. Indeed the fundamental interpretive question about the work is whether More intends Utopia as his ideal society. At the least, though, the Utopian commonwealth includes a number of institutions that he clearly regarded as preferable to those of sixteenth-century England and Europe.

The Utopian institutions toward which the book embodies a clearly favorable attitude do not for the most part involve science or technology: England had to wait until 1627, when Bacon's New Atlantis appeared, for its prototypical scientific utopia. More finds the principal means to human betterment not in scientific and technological advances but in wiser political, religious, and educational institutions. There are, however, several passages focusing on science and technology, and in all but one the attitude toward these subjects is unreservedly positive.

The account of Utopia is narrated by a fictitious character named Raphael Hythlodaeus, who is supposed to have sailed with Amerigo Vespucci and who now speaks to More and his friend Peter Giles. Just before the account, Hythlodaeus attempts to convince his auditors of the superiority of Utopia to Europe by an historical anecdote. Utopia had had, in about 300 C.E., a previous encounter with Old World visitors, in the form of a company of shipwrecked Romans and Egyptians. The Utopians, Hytholodaeus approvingly observes, profited greatly from this chance event, learning "every single useful art of the Roman empire either directly from their guests or by using the seeds of ideas to discover these arts for themselves ...This readiness to learn is, I think, the really important reason for their being better governed and living more happily than we do, though we are not inferior to them in brains or resources" (1995, p. 107; 2002, p. 39, 40). Later, discoursing again on the Utopians' passion for learning, Hythlodaeus notes that they are "wonderfully quick to seek out those various skills which make life more agreeable" (1995, p. 183; 2002, p. 76). In this instance, having heard in general terms about printing and paper-making from Hythlodaeus and his companions, the Utopians rapidly develop these technologies and use them to reprint the classical Greek and Roman books that Hythlodaeus's group had with them.

Among the ancient books, Hythlodaeus notes, the Utopians were especially pleased to receive works of Hippocrates and Galen, because in Utopia medical science is held in great esteem. In general, the Utopians find science a source not only of practical benefits but of keen intellectual pleasure. Hythlodaeus singles out for special praise their mastery of astronomy, in the pursuit of which "they compute with the greatest exactness the course and position of the sun, the moon and the other stars that are visible in their area of the sky" (1995, p. 157; 2002, p. 65). (For astrology, they have only contempt.) They also regard the exploration of the secrets of nature as a form of worship. God, they suppose, "created this beautiful mechanism of the world to be admired—and by whom, if not by man, who is alone in being able to appreciate so great a thing?" (1995, p. 183; 2002, p. 76).

Another area in which the Utopians are said to be especially inventive is the design of weapons. There is no hint of disapproval in the passage on this subject. (The Utopians avoid war whenever possible, but when it is unavoidable, they excel at it.) Only one passage in More's book intentionally raises the possibility that technological advance may not always be an unmixed blessing. Before reaching Utopia, Hythlodaeus and his companions have occasion to introduce their native South American hosts to the magnetic compass and its navigational benefits. Previously, the natives had "sailed with great timidity, and only in summer." Now, however, they put such trust in the loadstone that "they no longer fear winter at all, and tend to be careless rather than safe." Thus "there is some danger that through their imprudence this device, which they thought would be so advantageous to them, may become the cause of much mischief" (all quotes 1995, p. 49; 2002, p 12). This is as close as More comes to the topic of the ethicalimplications of science and technology—a topic that was, however, to be a major focus of many of the hundreds of utopias (and, latterly, dystopias) that have their prototype in his subtle little book.

Utopia and Dystopia.

Baker-Smith, Dominic. (1991). More's "Utopia." Unwin Critical Library. London and New York: HarperCollins Academic.

Guy, John. (2000). Thomas More. Reputations (series). London: Arnold; New York: Oxford University Press.

Manuel, Frank E., and Fritzie P. Manuel. (1979). Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

More, Thomas. (1995). Utopia: Latin Text and English Translation, eds. George M. Logan, Robert M. Adams, and Clarence H. Miller. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

More, Thomas. (2002). Utopia, rev. edition, eds. George M. Logan, and Robert M. Adams. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. This edition contains the English translation only (plus annotations and an introduction), omitting the Latin original. While the 1995 edition cited above is the scholarly standard, this 2002 version, a widely-used teaching edition with the same translation, is far handier.

This is the complete article, containing 1,019 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).