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New Science
Paperback / softback
Main Details
Title |
New Science
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Authors and Contributors |
By (author) Giambattista Vico
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Introduction by Anthony Grafton
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Translated by David Marsh
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Physical Properties |
Format:Paperback / softback | Pages:560 | Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129 |
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Category/Genre | History of Western philosophy |
ISBN/Barcode |
9780140435696
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Classifications | Dewey:195 |
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Audience | |
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Publishing Details |
Publisher |
Penguin Books Ltd
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Imprint |
Penguin Classics
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Publication Date |
29 April 1999 |
Publication Country |
United Kingdom
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Description
Deeply influential since the dawn of Romanticism, New Science is a monument to an isolated but true genius. Barely acknowledged in his lifetime, the New Science of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) is an astonishingly perceptive and ambitious attempt to decipher the history, mythology and laws of the ancient world. Discarding the Renaissance notion of the classical as an idealised model for the modern, it argues that the key to true understanding of the past lies in accepting that the customs and emotional lives of ancient Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Jews and Babylonians were radically different from our own. Along the way, Vico explores a huge variety of topics, ranging from physics to poetics, money to monsters, and family structures to the Flood. Marking a crucial turning-point in humanist thinking, New Science has remained deeply influential since the dawn of Romanticism, inspiring the work of Karl Marx and even influencing the framework for Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.
Author Biography
Although Vico (1668-1744) lived his whole life as an obscure academic in Naples, his New Science is an astonishingly ambitious attempt to decode the history, mythology and law of the ancient world.
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