Extract From University Essay On Swift`s Gulliver`s Travels

Write an essay about eighteenth-century writers' response to the scientific developments of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Book III of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was, for many years, considered a far lesser work than its compatriots, in terms of its episodic structure, the relevance and interest of its satire and the length of cogitation, claiming it had been written after the other three books in a short amount of time. Scholarship has, however, developed to view the third part of Gulliver not only as equally well-written and interesting, but of as lengthy consideration as the rest of the novel. Since Nicolson and Mohler's two analyses of the science behind Book III in 1937, critics have been able to view the satire of science over the entire novel from a far more knowledgeable standpoint. This has then led to a number of elucidating and fascinating studies on Swift's relationship to the science of his age. Swift's knowledge and interest in science and the scientific movements of his time are indisputable, as I will show. However, his satire of science was rarely written simply to satirise the science itself. Swift's interest lay in satirising the immorality, uselessness and distance of science from the concerns of the real world. On reading Gulliver it becomes clear that the satire of science was written from the viewpoint of someone who understood the scientific theory or practice being satirised, as opposed to someone who simply wanted to make a generalised satirical statement. For example, in Book III, Gulliver describes the Laputans' great astronomical knowledge due to their high quality telescopes: 'they magnify much more than those of a Hundred with us, and shew the Stars with greater Clearness.' With these higher quality instruments the Laputans have been able to discover 'two lesser Stars, or Satellites, which revolve about Mars; whereof the innermost is distant from the Center of the primary Planet exactly three of his Diameters, and the outermost five' . Mars' satellites were discussed by Newton but not established as fact until 1877. The descri ption of the movement of the satellites in Gulliver 'corresponds with the inverse square law of attraction as well as with Kepler's planetary laws' . This use of recent astronomical conjectures and mathematical theories is impressive enough in a literary writer, but Swift is able to make one further, astonishing leap. He made assertions about the distance of the satellites from Mars and of the lengths of their orbits. Using 'Kepler's third planetary law' he developed an equation to work out the orbit time of the second satellite as being 'Twenty-one and an Half' hours. These calculations proved to be 'approximately correct' when measurements were taken in 1877.