Horst Steinke
102
cess, of the epistemic enterprise, and is ontologically irreducible.
This essentially pessimistic view
242
of the state of affairs, howev-
er, is not the only, nor necessarily the most important, ramifica-
tion: with equal justification, it can be valued as a recipe for
openness to alternatives, and as the condition of possibility of
constantly new ways of seeing and understanding.
5.3
Trichotomy in “Scienza nuova”
vs. trichotomy in “De antiquissima”
At several places above, analogies were drawn between Vico’s
assignment of theoretical burden to “philology” and the role of
mathematics in science. Mathematics, of course, is the main top-
ic – considered from an epistemological point of view – of Vi-
co’s
De antiquissima
243
. But mathematics is not considered in isola-
tion, rather in relation to metaphysics, on the one hand, and the
actual physical realm (“physics”), on the other hand, assigning it
a mediating function
244
. In Vico studies, a number of deeply-
running connections between
De antiquissima
and
Scienza nuova
have been elucidated, some of which interpret them cautiously in
a propaedeutic sense, whereas others discern a substantial degree
of continuity,
modulo
the distinct subject matters, which in the
former work concern the physical world, and in the latter, the
socio-historical realm
245
. A measure of caution in relating both
works certainly is indicated, in the first place, by their radically
different character.
De antiquissima
, aside from the fact that its
length is a fraction of the length of
Scienza nuova,
is part polemic
against, part exposé of, Cartesianism, but above all a fully-
developed counterphilosophy of science, and of its conditions of
possibility, at the core of which lies the
verum-factum
nexus.
Against this backdrop, Vico’s strenuous effort in
Scienza nuova
to
work out a sound methodology of unearthing the origins, and
thus the invariants, of human affairs seem not remotely amena-
ble to being cross-referenced with the physico-mathematical in-
quiry of
De antiquissima
. However, upon closer scrutiny, certain
common underlying thinking patterns between the younger and