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