First post, I hope it's in the right place! It's been mentioned a handful of times on The Fuselage, but nothing really specific has been put forward.

Is Lost set on Bensalem, the island in Sir Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis? "The novel depicts a mythical land, Bensalem, which is discovered by the crew of a European ship after they are lost in the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of Peru. The European narrator recounts some of the island's customs and, most importantly, its state-sponsored scientific institution, Solomon's House.

The best and brightest of Bensalem's citizens attend a college called Solomon's House, in which scientific experiments are conducted in Baconian method in order to understand and conquer nature, and to apply the collected knowledge to the betterment of society." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Atlantis

I've just been listening to a radio piece about Bacon that mentioned the novel and a number of really interesting parallels; an electromagneticly cloaked (though I need to check the EM part) island unknown to the rest of the world; a secretive race of religious but scientific inhabitants who rarely leave, and when they do, they generally return with information from the outside world, only 13 have left never to return; A series of laboratories dotted around the island, each dedicated to a specific area of study (one deep underground studying refrigeration, donkey-wheel much?)...

Anyway, I want to do a bit of reading on this, but I thought I'd put it out there, and see if anything bites.