Satire On Natural Science In Gulliver’s Travels

The third part of Gulliver’s Travels has always been associated with the theme ofscience. There have been a number of attempts to grip with Swift and science. In the1930s, Marjorie Nicolson’s most memorable work,“The Scientific Background ofSwift’s Voyage to Laputa,” is a pioneering one studying Swift’s scientific subject.However, commentators disagree on Swift’s attitude towards science. This thesisattempts to demonstrate that Swift satirizes natural science in the third part ofGulliver’s Travels. He believes that natural science does not have any practical utilitybecause it cannot help to promote the development of society. And the natural sciencemight do more harm than good if a scientist conspires with the government to ruletheir people. The formative elements of Swift’s satire on natural science are studiedfrom historical and personal aspects. Historically, Swift was born too late to see thefirst flair of popularity of natural philosophy and the Royal Society, and too early tosee the practical results starting to appear in the mid-eighteenth century. What’s more,in Swift’s time, scientific methodology was then still under the shaping and thereforeeasily bring into mistakes. Thus the satirists had opportunities to make fun at thescientist who had failed in their endeavors. The satirists and scientists have thedifferent epistemology. When judging on scientific research, satirists might appeal tocommonsense while scientists might appeal to their specialized knowledge orintuition. But commonsense is not the reliable criterion to measure whether ascientific research is reasonable or not. Satirists are more likely to attack scientists outof personal abomination, moral concern and so on. Personally, Swift is a moralist. It ismoral concern that he sets out to satirize natural science. Wood’s halfpence affairmakes him get furious with Newton. For Swift, this great scientist has become theaccomplice of English government to rule the Ireland. As a moralist and patriot, hetakes revenge on the Newton in the third part of Gulliver’s Travels.