JM Roberts writes that human history is essentially cumulative. Each culture makes its deposit in the bank, and we can draw on the compound interest. The metaphor gets at the truth of things even if we reject its bourgeois phrasing.

Vico wrote this defence of social science at a time when the literati were becoming fixated on the "physical" sciences under the influence of Descartes Discourse on Method . For Descartes, all history could teach us is that customs varied from one time and place to another. History was just a form of virtual travel. Vico replied that one can best understand what one has made. Man made his own history, and this makes it the proper study of mankind. He uses the apt metaphor of how a geometrician creates something which he can also measure. Once I believed that this attitude implied that man should abandon the study of the natural world, since Vico believes that God was its maker. I now believe that I was mistaken in this, since it now seems to me that Vico instead argued that man should dedicate most of his time and effort to studying man, *not all*. Even if we reject his particular iteration of universal stage theory, as I believe we must, there is here nonetheless an acute awareness that society is always changing. There is some tension between this awareness and Vico's insistence that there exists an ideal, eternal history that all cultures pass through. He even chastises Tacitus for not arriving at this conception, but I think he was wise not to given the many particularities of cultural development. Vulgar Marxism also ignores these to insist that everyone moves from primitive communism, to slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. But these changes, though they do indeed happen, do not happen at the same time everywhere, and some societies move through these same phases in different orders or even skip phases altogether.

Throughout the work, Vico claims to know the mind of God by reading Providence into human history. He does not realize that one immediate and elementary objection to this is that it contradicts his own fundamental axiom. If man did not make God, how can he know God. Even if we argue that man can know God, but not as well as himself, by Vico's own logic Providence should not play such a major role in his arguments as it does. In these senses he stands between the Modern and Premodern conceptions of the universe. But Vico cannot come to terms with the non-occurrence of a universal flood, or the non-existence of giants.

He makes some mistakes one should be aware of before reading. I will list them here -

The Jews are not the most ancient of all cultures. Vico speaks of the conceit of scholars and nations and unwittingly demonstrates both by insisting on the aforementioned error.

Zoroaster was not a Chaldean. He was East Iranic.

Scythians and Phoenicians do not antedate Egypt.

Assyria was not the oldest monarchy. Sumer predates it.

Chaldean is his choice of phrase for the Babylonians, which is somewhat confusing.

Not all "pagan nations" have a "king of the gods". Think Celts, etc.

Some of the terminology is also dated. We no longer speak of ancient peoples as nations or of metaphysics as a divine science. But what remains sound in Vico is his belief that we need to understand earlier peoples on their own terms. Part of that is remembering that their mythology was to them what history is to us, and like us they acted on it. Vico was also right to say that geography and time are the two eyes of history, but I would have added a word on climate. And is not the injustice of time an immortal phrase for the heritage which we have lost? Unlike Varro's work, Vico's has fortunately survived. It was his misfortune to have his ingeniousness recognized longer after his death.

New science

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New science (1999)

New science (1999)

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