In Other Worlds - Margaret Eleanor Atwood [81]
Predicting the future and suggesting the invention of handy new devices was, however, very far from Swift’s intention. His “projectors”—so called because they are absorbed in their projects—are a combination of experimental scientist and entrepreneur; they exist within Gulliver’s Travels as pearls on his long string of human folly and depravity, midway between the Lilliputians and their tiny fracas and petty intrigues and the brutal, nasty, smelly, ugly, and vicious Yahoos of the fourth book, who represent humanity in its bared-to-the-elements Hobbesian basic state.
But Swift’s projectors aren’t wicked, and they aren’t really demented. They’re even well meaning: their inventions are intended for the improvement of humankind. All we have to do is give them more money and more time and let them have their way, and everything will get a lot better very soon. It’s a likely story, and one we’ve heard many times since the advent of applied science. Sometimes this story ends well, at least for a while—science did lower the human mortality rate, the automobile did speed up travel, air conditioning did make us cooler in summer, the “green revolution” did increase the supply of food. But the doctrine of unintended consequences applies quite regularly to the results of scientific “improvements”: agriculture can’t keep up with the population explosion with the result that millions are leading lives of poverty and misery, air conditioning contributes to global warming, the automobile promised freedom until—via long commute distances, clogged roads, and increased pollution—it delivered servitude. Swift anticipated us: the projectors promise an idyllic future in which one man shall do the work of ten and all fruits shall be available at all times—pace automation and the supermarket—but “The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection, and in the meantime, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes.” Under the influence of the projectors the utopian pie is visible in the sky, but it remains there.
As I’ve said, the projectors are not intentionally wicked. But they have tunnel vision—much like a present-day scientist quoted recently, who, when asked why he’d created a polio virus from scratch, answered that he’d done it because the polio virus was a simple one, and that next time he’d create a more complex virus. A question most of us would have understood to have meant, “Why did you do such a potentially dangerous thing?”—a question about ends—was taken by him to be a question about means. Swift’s projectors show the same confusion in their understanding of ordinary human desires and fears. Their greatest offence is not against morals: instead they are offenders against common sense—what Swift might have called merely “sense.” They don’t intend to cause harm, but by refusing to admit the adverse consequences of their actions, they cause it anyway.
The Grand Academy of Lagado was recognized by Swift’s readers as a satire upon the Royal Society, which even by Swift’s time was an august and respected institution. Though English seekers after empirical facts had been meeting since 1640, the group became formalized as the Royal Society under Charles II, and as of 1663 was referred to as “The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.” The word natural signifies the distinction between such knowledge—based on what you could see and measure, and on the “scientific method”: some combination of observation, hypothesis, deduction, and experiment—from “divine” knowledge, which was thought to be invisible and immeasurable, and of a higher order.
Though these two orders of knowledge were not supposed to be in conflict, they often were, and both kinds might be brought to bear on the same problem, with opposite results. This was especially true during outbreaks of disease: victims and their families would resort both to prayer and to