Abstract

This study is the first in-depth examination of the axiomatics of Vico's Scienza nuova. Its central focus is to understand the methodology of Vico's new science through an examination of its axioms. An axiom, as a basic governing principle, or $\alpha\rho\chi\acute\eta$, of scientific knowledge, provides a key to the articulation of the principles of coherence peculiar to the system it operates within. Vico's axioms fundamentally reject the deductive orientation of the new sciences that developed out of the Renaissance revival of mathematics and culminated in the geometric method of rationalism . Vico's new science then requires a reconstruction of the basic language of science, including such expressions as "axiom," "system," "truth," and "knowledge." ;This new vision of science is rooted not in logic but in Aristotle's doctrine of topics. It is from the commonplace, or topic, that arguments are generated and shaped. Vico's new science reconstitutes logical notions such as the axiom, the syllogism, and the enthymeme in terms of the deeper order of the topic. Through an exploration of what Aristotle meant by $\alpha\pi\acute o\delta\epsilon\iota\xi\iota\varsigma\ `\rho\eta\tau o\rho\iota\kappa\acute\eta$, in conjunction with an examination of Vico's interaction with the commonplace tradition, it is shown that Vico's axioms are gnomic enthymemes that operate according to a topical methodology. Axioms then become what Vico calls "thoughts worth thinking" $, and are the elements of narrative memory that are essential to human self-knowledge. ;As a work rooted in the ars topica, the Scienza nuova is a fulfillment of the Renaissance memory tradition. It reveals the structure of a metaphysics compatible with human frailty that provides a guide to a prudential science of memory. In this book of wisdom the axioms circulate as general and particular topics. These topics are gnomic enthymemes that combine $\lambda\acute o\gamma o\varsigma$ and $\pi\acute \alpha\theta o\varsigma$ in a heroic attempt to understand the human condition eloquently, as a whole. But given the fact that Vico's science is found in the third age of the barbarism of reflection, it is a melancholic wisdom. The method of the Scienza nuova is essentially a geometry of melancholy