Mingling with Matter: Tactile Microscopy and the Philosophic Mind in Brobdingnag and Beyond

This article argues for Jonathan Swift's skepticism about the new science of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and his ambivalent exploration of the sense of touch through microscopy in the Brobdignag chapters of Gullivers Travels. Reading Swift’s “Voyage to Brobdingnag” (1726) in conjunction with an anonymous pornographic poem from 1732 entitled “The Microscope,” this essay helps further elaborate the nature of Swift’s skepticism regarding the new science. In doing so, it reveals another dimension of Swift’s satire of science as of yet unexplored by scholars: namely, the disdain it expresses for empirical philosophers’ investment in tactility. Unlike most scholarship on the new science and empiricism, which emphasizes Enlightenment vision, this article identifies touch as central to the discourse of empiricism in eighteenth-century Britain.