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How does Laputa satirize learning without practical purpose?

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Illustration of Lemuel Gulliver lying on the ground, tied down by tiny Lilliputians, with crowds and small buildings in the background, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. — Gulliver’s Travels Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, illustration from an edition of Jonathan Swift's *Gulliver's Travels*.

In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift uses the floating island of Laputa and the Academy of Lagado to satirize intellectual pursuits that are detached from reality and lack practical utility.12

The inhabitants of Laputa are so preoccupied with abstract mathematics and music that they are constantly absent-minded, requiring "flappers" to remind them to pay attention to the world around them. Their obsession with higher speculation renders them incapable of managing their own lives or surroundings, leading to frequent accidents.12

This satire extends to the Academy of Lagado, which serves as a travesty of England’s Royal Society. Within the academy, "lunatic savants" engage in absurd and entirely impractical projects, such as attempting to extract sunbeams from cucumbers or reducing human excrement back into its original food. By depicting these intellectuals as deranged pedants who ignore the squalor and ruin of the society around them, Swift mocks the folly of pursuing knowledge that serves no human purpose or common good.12