Giambattista Vico's science of humanity

Each section is broken down into subsections ; thus 'Historiography' consists of 'History of historical writing' and 'Studies of historians'. Book and article titles are grouped separately and individual entries have full citations, together with a very brief descriptive comment in many instances. There is a name index only. Many references to sociology are listed, and although 'Psychohistory', that curious and unproven hybrid, is given a separate grouping, the histories of science and medicine are not accorded any special mention., is now receiving more attention than previously, because by means of a holistic, humanistic idea of man he provides a better way of understanding the human mind and knowledge as far as the imagination , the will, creativity, feeling, the sensuous, and the aesthetic are concerned. Earlier philosophers, especially Descartes, and their schools failed to do this. Vico's classic, Principi di scienza nuova (Naples, 1744), is now better known, and its significance for present-day thought better appreciated. This book continues the process ofpopularization by presenting twenty-eight essays on Vico's multifarious endeavours. They are in five groups: historical and interpretive studies tracing the development of Vico's thought; Vico's conception of history and historical knowledge and its significance for problems in modern philosophy; Vico, philosophy and the history of philosophy, showing the relationships between him and modern philosophers; Vico and topics in humanistic and social scientific thought; Vico's views on politics. They provide further insights into Vico's thought and into the acceptance of it today, and are all of a high order of scholarship. A list of critical writings on Vico in English provides a most useful reference tool. The editors and their contributors have produced an important and useful book which will serve for some time as a repository of information concerning Vichian philosophy for the student of early eighteenth-century thought. They will, however, be less keen to use this as a means of solving modern philosophical problems. Although comparable with Darby's A new historical geography of England, (1973), no reference is made to it. However, Dr. Perry's book is the more competently written of the two; it includes Scotland, and it is better integrated. It is intended for the historian as well as the geographer and deals with the railway, the cotton industry, mining, the postal system, population, technology, agriculture, and transport, all of which have medical associations and are therefore of importance to the historian of nineteenth-century British medicine. …