Work

The New Science

Scienza Nuova

Giambattista Vico·1725 CE·Italian

About this text

Vico's attempt to do for the human world what Newton had done for nature: a science of history. Nations rise through an age of gods, an age of heroes, and an age of men, then fall back and begin again. Because human beings made this world of institutions, Vico argues, they can truly know it — a claim that quietly inverted the science of his century.

This world of nations has certainly been made by men, and its guise must therefore be found within the modifications of our own human mind. Whoever reflects on this cannot but marvel that the philosophers should have bent all their energies to the study of the world of nature, which, since God made it, He alone knows, and neglected the world of nations, which, since men had made it, men could come to know.

Full text not yet available.