To view prices and purchase online, please login or create an account now.



New Science

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title New Science
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Giambattista Vico
Introduction by Anthony Grafton
Translated by David Marsh
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:560
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenreHistory of Western philosophy
ISBN/Barcode 9780140435696
ClassificationsDewey:195
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publication Date 29 April 1999
Publication Country United Kingdom

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.