The Floating Island of Laputa

In his 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift's description of the floating island of Laputa, driven by a group of lunatic scientists with a time-wheel magnetism and other absurd inventions, mocks the Royal Society. This oldest British academy for the sponsorship of scientific enterprise was founded in 1660 on the Rosicrucian idea of an "invisible college" encouraging the highest educational ideals. The Laputans believe in astrology and worry constantly that the sun will go out. However, they are fond of astronomy and have discovered two moons of Mars. (This was 151 years earlier than the discovery of Phobos and Deimos by American astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877.) On Phobos, astronomers have named a discolored area "Laputa Regio," after Swift's flying island.