It is thought that Swift was opposed to the new science that heralded the beginning of the modern age, but this book interrogates that assumption, tracing the theological, political, and socio-cultural resonances of scientific knowledge in the early eighteenth century, and considering what they can reveal about Swift's imagination.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Altitudes of Authority Meditations and Mechanisms: Swift and Robert Boyle's Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects Sinking the 'Spider's Cittadel': The Battel of the Books and Thomas Burnet's 'Philosophical Romance' of the Earth Newtonian Battels with Rising Stars and Wheeling Moons Laputian Newtons: Science, the Wood's Halfpence Affair and Gulliver's Travels Socinians and Queens: Samuel Clarke and 'Directions for a Birthday Song' Afterword Notes Bibliography Index
