33 / 298
Vico’s Ring
33
La Scienza Nuova nelle edizioni del 1730 e del 1744
, cit., p. 335). There are other
aspects to the Chronological Table not mentioned here, see, for example, P.
Cristofolini,
La Scienza nuova
di Vico
, cit., pp. 51-57.
To further underline the programmatic nature of Vico’s Chronological
Table/Notes, it may be instructive to compare them to the “tables” that the
much admired Francis Bacon promoted in scientific research. See
The Novum
Organum, or A True Guide To The Interpretation Of Nature
, trans. by G. W.
Kitchin, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1855, pp. 125-165. According to P.
Rossi, «the tables must order and classify instances so that we may master and
control them» (Id.,
Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science
, trans. by S. Rabinovitch,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968, p. 202; originally appeared in Ital-
ian as
Francesco Bacone: Dalla magia alla scienza,
Bari, Laterza, 1957). Compared
to Bacon’s tables that function as databases of essentially (at least presumably)
“raw” data, Vico’s table depicts the mastery and control achieved by the end
of the process.
45
This might also be a good time to refer to the efforts of depicting
Scien-
za nuova
of 1730/1744 as a more or less seamless culmination of Vico’s prior
work, published, unpublished, or missing/lost. See, for example, G. Gentile,
Studi Vichiani
, ed. by V. A. Belleza, Florence, Sansoni, 3
rd
edition, 1968, pp.
167-188. Within the well-established framework of this account, however, the
subtle and not so subtle shifts, not to say leaps, in Vico’s thought beg for
recognition. As Placella wrote with respect to
Scienza nuova
1730: «La mancata
edizione veneziana della
Scienza nuova
c’interessa sopratutto perché in essa era
gran parte del segreto del “salto” dalla prima alla seconda
Scienza nuova,
salto
che […] ha conferito al capolavoro vichiano il suo aspetto definitivo sul piano
metodologico e della disposizione della material. (The missing Venetian edi-
tion of the
Scienza nuova
is above all of interest because in it lies to a large ex-
tent the secret of the ‘leap’ from the first to the second
Scienza nuova
, a leap
that […] has conferred on his greatest work its definitive form
on the meth-
odological level as well as in the organization of the material)» (Id.,
La mancata
edizione veneziana della Scienza Nuova
, cit., pp. 147-148). So the unresolved ques-
tion is not the fact itself of a conceptual “leap” on Vico’s part, but only when
exactly it may have occurred. See also P. Cristofolini,
La Scienza nuova
di Vico
,
cit., pp. 25-34, where the ontogenesis of the 1744 edition is presented in terms
of compositional “strata”
(“strati” compositivi
).
46
Without wanting to overstretch affinities, it is as though at the end of
the Notes, one could skip to Book V and read it as their continuation. For
example, § 115 in the Notes says, under the heading of Petelian Laws: «This
second law, “on slavery for debt” (
de nexu
), was enacted in the year of Rome
419 (and thus three years after the Publilian Law)»; and reference is made to it