Publishers regularly resort to two standby artists, Joseph Wright of Derby and James Gillray, for adorning the covers of their books about science and society. When contemplating the title of Gregory Lynall's first monograph, Swift and Science: The Satire, Politics and Theology of Natural Knowledge, 1690–1730, the designers at Palgrave Macmillan understandably plumped for a dramatic caricature, presumably deeming it inconsequential that Gillray's Alchymist appeared at the end of the eighteenth century and lampooned William Pitt (not even born until 1759) as a royal sycophant spending the Treasury's golden coins on distilling democracy into dictatorship.

This preoccupation with associative symbolism rather than hard historical accuracy characterizes Lynall's approach. I intend this not as a criticism but as a reflection on broad differences between the academic disciplines of English literature and history of science. In a verbal equivalent of caricature – an art form that ruthlessly exposes unpalatable truths by exaggerating beyond the limits of credibility – literary critics have little time for chronology, whereas historians plough unimaginatively through furrows of facts. Or, as Jonathan Swift did not say, experts on literature try to make sunbeams out of cucumbers, while explorers of the past are weighed down by the burdensome load of exactitude.

As a related but equally over-simplistic contrast, literary analysts place authors at the focus of interest, whereas historians of science pursue the routes taken by knowledge as it travels unpredictably through space and time, mapping its movements by investigating the afterlives of texts. Because Lynall is committed to examining Swift's role as a commentator on his own times, he picks texts apart in fine detail but largely excludes consideration of imitations, responses or later editions. A rare exception is his only reproduction of a Swiftian illustration, a 1754 image of the Laputan royal court, but he reads it as a direct representation of Swift's original intentions, first expressed in print almost thirty years earlier.

An extremely thorough and well-informed piece of scholarship, Lynall's book places priority on discussing how contemporary knowledge affected Swift's work rather than on any reciprocal part Swift may have played in shaping science. The secondary bibliography is peppered with articles by eminent historians of science whose names are familiar, yet are here enlisted to underpin a complementary process of interpretation. When they set about mining the rich resource of Swift's oeuvre, they mostly began by identifying themes relevant to scientific culture, and then illustrated the development and implications of each one by plundering such treasure troves as Gulliver's Travels and The Battel of the Books. Lynall has approached this topic from the opposite direction, structuring Swift and Science by Swift's works, and drawing in contextual details to amplify a fixed text. By adopting this strategy, he has created an excellent close reading of Swift that elaborates the cultural references pervading his publications in the early eighteenth century, but has little to say about Swift's long-term impact.

The Swift described by Lynall parodies the follies of experimental science in order to forge a rhetorical weapon for debates about establishing public authority. He deploys satire to challenge all human claims to ultimate truth, but sometimes becomes unwittingly trapped by that belief's illogical inconsistency: if you are suspicious of any appeal to universality, explains Lynall, then you cannot legitimately call on common sense as a benchmark. In five substantial chapters, Lynall relates individual Swiftian texts to five main scientific figures of the period: Robert Boyle, Thomas Burnet, Richard Bentley, Isaac Newton and Samuel Clarke. Unsurprisingly, he pays greatest attention to Newton, suggesting that as a close friend of his niece Catherine Barton, Swift had immediate access to household gossip. On the other hand, Newton's influence in this early part of the century was less hegemonic than Lynall assumes. Although he recognizes that the publication of a book does not necessarily mean that its ideas are immediately accepted or even understood, he is – like many other scholars – so swayed by knowledge of Newton's future domination that he overestimates its power during his lifetime.

For any researcher fascinated by Swift and his circle, Lynall has provided an indispensable guide to Britain's most penetrating satirical commentator on science, politics and religion – a worthy predecessor of Gillray, albeit in a different medium.