Leibniz, a mathematician, similarly believed that once “words of vague
and uncertain meaning” were reduced to mathematical ”fixed symbols,”
the language of philosophy could be purified so that even in matters of
ethics “... there would be no more need of disputation between two
philosophers than between two accountants. For it would suffice to take
their pencils in their hands, to sit down to their slates, and to say to each
other (with a friend as witness, if they liked): Let us calculate.” An idea
which even in its phrasing recalls Swift’s implement-toting conversa-
tionalists, who “... when they met in the Streets would lay down their
Loads, open their Sacks, and hold Conversation for an Hour together... .”
Swift clearly rejects this absurd reasoning, even summoning up the
ghost of Aristotle in a later chapter to refute “the Vorticesof Descartes.”
Another Enlightenment thinker hovering in the background of Swift’s
book is Sir Isaac Newton, whose mathematical explanation of nature’s
laws seemed to reduce the universe to a vast machine. After centuries of
doctrinal controversy and religious wars, Newton’s image of a clockwork
universe must have provided comfort to religion-haunted Europeans. As
time passed, however, and people’s lives became more mechanized, it
became an emblem of horror, inspiring a Luddite revulsion against the
scheme’s cold determinism. Later scientific developments like the
Second Law of Thermodynamics, which showed that the universal clock
was winding down, only added to the confusion and terror.
Later, in the twentieth century, Einstein’s theory of relativity and
Heisenberg’s concept of quantum uncertainty further quantified and
demystified nature, yet, paradoxically, some artists and thinkers inter-
preted the ideas more positively, believing they offered loopholes allow-
ing some measure of freedom. Rejecting order and symmetry, they
embraced chaos, uncertainty, and randomness instead. Dada was born of
this new zeitgeist. Since the early twentieth century, poets and artists
have fractured the elements of their media and inserted randomness into
the process of creation. Poets have pulled words from hats, artists spat-
tered paint, and musicians flipped coins to determine the arrangement of
their compositions—or offered ambient noise in place of orchestral har-
monies. More recently, writers and computer programmers have collab-
orated to produce “poems” by inserting randomly selected words into
program-generated patterns.
And yet, as modern and revolutionary as these experiments once
seemed to be, they appeared—fully developed—centuries earlier in
Swift’s great satire. During Gulliver’s tour through the Academy of
Lagado, a professor bent on improving “speculative Knowledge by prac-
tical and mechanical Operations” devised a large mechanical frame
The Enchanted Loom: A New Paradigm for Literature 143