New Science

The New Science (original title Scienza Nuova [ˈʃentsa ˈnwɔːva]) is the major work of Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, published in 1725. It has been highly influential in the philosophy of history, sociology, anthropology, and for historicists like Isaiah Berlin and Hayden White. The central concepts were highly original, and prefigured the Enlightenment.

The original full title is Principi di Scienza Nuova d'intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni, which may be literally translated as "Principles/Origins of New/Renewed Science About/Surrounding the Common Nature of Nations".

In 1720, Vico began work on the Scienza Nuova as part of a treatise on Universal rights. Although a full volume was originally to be sponsored by Cardinal Corsini (the future Pope Clement XII), Vico was forced to finance the publication himself after the Cardinal pleaded financial difficulty and withdrew his patronage. The first edition of the New Science (Scienza Nuova, rather than Nuova Scienza, for which Galileo had been known) appeared in 1725, and a second, reworked version was published in 1730; neither was well received during Vico’s lifetime.

Vico himself worked on two revisited editions, that were published under new titles, the first in 1730 and the second posthumously in 1744. It was the first work by Vico to be written in Italian, while his previous ones were written in Latin.

In its first section, titled "Idea of the Work" (Idea dell'Opera), the Scienza Nuova (1730 and 1744) explicitly presents itself as a "Science of reasoning" (Scienza di ragionare). Indeed, the work (cf. most notably the section "Of the Elements") includes a dialectic between axioms (authoritative maxims or degnità) and "reasonings" (ragionamenti) linking and clarifying the axioms.

Vico specifies that his "Scienza" reasons primarily about the function of religion in the human world ("Idea of the Work"), and in this respect the work "comes to be one reasoned civil theology of divine providence" (vien ad essere una teologia civile ragionata della provvidenza divina). Reconsidering divine things (viz. "the conduct of divine providence") within a human or political context, Vico unearths the "poetic theologians" (poeti teologi) of pagan antiquity, exposing the poetic character of theology independently of Christianity's sacred history and thus of Biblical authority (see e.g. Scienza Nuova [1744], "Of the Elements," CXIV). Vico's unearthing of poetic theology (anticipated already in his De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia (1710), "On the most ancient wisdom of the Italians") confirms the philosopher's ties to Italian Renaissance appeals to theologia poetica. With the early Renaissance, Vico shares the call for recovering a "pagan" or "vulgar" horizon for philosophy's providential agency, or for recognizing the providence of our human "metaphysical" minds/menti in the world of our "political" wills/animi ("Idea of the Work," par. 2). "Poetic theology" would serve as stage for an "ascent" (ibid.) to recognize the inherence or latency of rational agency in our actions, even when these are brutal (see further "Of the Method," par. 2). This way, the particular providence of the Bible's "true God" ("Of the Elements," CXIV) would not be required for the thriving of properly human life. All that would be needed was (A) false religions/Gods and (B) the covert work of the conatus (rational principle of constitution of experience rooted in its proper infinite form) examined at length in the De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia and evoked again in par. 2 of the "Of the Method" section of the Scienza Nuova (1730 and 1744).

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