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Horst Steinke

130

than staying strictly on the subject of the genesis of language in

Section II, “Poetic Logic”

,

Vico already addresses his schema of

«three kinds of languages» (§§ 432-446) that is formally the sub-

ject of Section V of Book IV

281

. An examination of the surface

structure of the two Books also makes it immediately apparent

that the last sections of Book II are missing in Book IV, on

phys-

ics, cosmography, astronomy, chronology, geography

282

.

While Book IV is

silent about possible reasons for the exclusion, in Book II, Vico,

however, himself provides a basis for differential treatment, or,

equivalently, non-treatment, in Book IV of the various individual

areas or aspects that in totality make up “Poetic Wisdom”. In §

367, he writes:

From this [a crude metaphysics], as from a trunk, there branch out

from one limb logic, morals, economics, and politics, all poetic; and

from another, physics, the mother of cosmography and astronomy, the

latter of which gives their certainty to the two daughters, chronology

and geography – all likewise poetic.

What matters to us most in this statement, in our argumenta-

tive context, is the grouping of the various “poetic” disciplines

and their underlying areas of human life, by means of the simile

of a tree and branches

283

. The last five “poetic” factors are sepa-

rated out from the rest and assigned to a different subdivision of

the “tree”, a caesura that follows a certain taxonomic logic, if the

first grouping or branch is seen as “cultural” factors vs. the sec-

ond group, as “physical/naturalistic” elements originating in the

biophysical world

284

. Against this background, the omission in

Book IV of the last few sections of Book II is not necessarily

ad

hoc

but has a systematic aspect to it in that it involves precisely

those factors, and only those factors, that are not strictly “cultur-

al”

285

.

There are a total of eleven

286

sections in segment C’;

they, too,

like the sections of Book II, range over a broad array of mat-

ters

287

. The headings of the sections, on their own, would seem