Vico, << VEE koh, >> Giovanni Battista (1668-1744), was an Italian scholar and philosopher. His most important book was The New Science (1725). He is considered by many scholars to be the leading pioneer of modern historical studies. The German scholars and philosophers who founded modern historical studies in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s used his theories. Vico rejected the emphasis most scholars of his time gave to science and mathematics. He believed that history was the most knowable study. He pointed out that we can really know only what we have made, and history is something that we ourselves have made.
Vico worked out rules for studying history. He tried to find similarities between different periods, and laws of historical development common to all civilizations. The “heroic” age of Homer in ancient Greece, for instance, resembled the European Middle Ages. These ages were both followed by “classical” periods of reason, science, and industrial development. Vico was born in Naples.
