When Jonathan Swift composed his famous novel, Gulliver's Travels, he undoubtedly possessed a keen sense of where society was and where it was going. Today, science and reason tend to dominate academia and capture the minds of countless individuals around the world. While these schools of thought, the sciences in particular, were in their infancy during Swift's lifetime, he conceived a masterly critique of them that remains valid to this day. Swift demonstrates how a science-driven society, represented by the people of Laputa, can lead to progress in the wrong direction. With the account of the Houyhnhnms and their culture, Swift exposes some of the potential problems that a society based on pure reason might encounter. Upon Gulliver's arrival in Laputa, Gulliver meets many "brilliant" professors who have devoted their lives to useless exercises. Even worse, some are inventing solutions to problems that don't exist. “There was the most ingenious architect, who had devised a new method of building houses by starting at the roof and working down to the foundation” (Swift 105). Gulliver later notices that most of the houses in the town are badly deformed or in a state of disrepair. This can be interpreted as a warning from Swift to ordinary citizens to enthusiastically embrace every new technology introduced by the scientific revolution. Like Swift's other criticisms, this message remains valid in modern times. Shortly after the discovery of X-rays, machines were designed to image a person's foot for the purpose of measuring shoes. Although they exposed customers to harmful ionizing radiation in the process, they offered little improvement over previous methods of sizing a shoe. Overall, Swift criticizes the “because we can” attitude that seems to be ever-present in the sciences. Gulliver's Travels also offers a critique of logical reasoning by presenting the reader with a society entirely governed by Utilitarianism. It is not likely that Swift is criticizing utilitarianism, since the book's publication predates both Bentham and Mill, but it is impossible to miss Swift's criticism of uncontrolled reason. In particular, the Houyhnhnms have largely replaced positive emotions such as familial love with rational collective friendship. Meanwhile, they maintain negative emotional characteristics, as evidenced by their hatred of “yahoos.” Swift writes: “Their old debate, and indeed only debate. . . The question was, 'should the Yahoos be exterminated from the face of the Earth?'” (160). For a society that supposedly cannot understand evil in rational creatures, this statement is particularly sinister. Modern readers, who have atrocities like the Holocaust in mind, have no difficulty seeing that the Houyhnhnms are following a dangerous path with uncontrolled reason at the same time.