1 - The revision of science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2009
Summary
If natural philosophy, in all its parts, by pursuing this method, shall at length be perfected, the bounds of moral philosophy will also be enlarged.
Isaac Newton, Opticks, 31st QueryIndeed, were you to apply the geometric method to life, ‘you would succeed only in trying to be a rational lunatic’, steering in a straight line amid life's curves, as though caprice, rashness, chance and fortune held no sway in human affairs.
Vico, On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, ch. vIn his well-known and influential essay, The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities, Isaiah Berlin argues that although there have always been disputes about method and distinctions with regard to these spheres of knowledge (Berlin effectively discards the common notion of ‘two cultures’), it was only in the eighteenth century that there emerged a ‘sense of contrast’ between the two. Berlin concludes that ‘the great cleavage between the provinces of natural science and the humanities was, for the first time, made, or revealed, for better or for worse, by Giambattista Vico. Thereby he started a great debate of which the end is not in sight.’ Similarly, in his Newtonian Studies, Alexander Koyré touches upon the same problem, and points to Newton as the culprit responsible for ‘the splitting of our world in two’.
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- The Rehabilitation of MythVico's 'New Science', pp. 16 - 73Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992