Online Seminar Series
New Science by Giambattista Vico
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
“Giambattista Vico bestrides the modern humanities and social sciences like a colossus.” —Anthony Grafton, Historian, Princeton University
Originally published in 1725, ‘New Science’ takes a blended philosophical and philological approach to identify predictable patterns in the development of human history. Among many surprising but convincing findings, Vico’s research leads him to conclude, over a century before the publication of ’The Ancient City,’ by Numa Fustel de Coulange, that the ancients saw the world in a fundamentally different way than modern man.
The historian Anthony Grafton, addressing Vico’s “massive decoding of ancient history, mythology and law,” writes that ‘The New Science’ “is commonly recognized as one of the founding works of the modern human sciences, a work in some ways as deep and original as the contemporary work that transformed the natural sciences, the ‘Principia’ of Isaac Newton.”
Vico’s many admirers include the author James Joyce, who used Vico’s cycles of history in the structure of his final work “Finnegans Wake.” Join us to explore this highly original and influential work.
August 22 Reading:
New Science by Giambattista Vico
Book 3 – Discovery of the True Homer
(Pages 353 through 392)
Penguin Classics; 3rd edition (January 2000)
ISBN 978-0140435696
Series Schedule:
Every other Tuesday afternoon
Schedule:
12:00-1:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Barry Rabe
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.