• “Verum and Factum” (45-47) – Verum esse ipsum factum = “The true is the thing made [or done] itself.” In other words, the ultimate knowledge of the thing is inherent in the making of it. Vico claims this level of truth is God’s truth, perhaps understood as his transcendent knowledge of the thing. Pg 46: “But to know (scire) is to put together the elements of things. Hence, discursive thought (cogitatio) is what is proper to the human mind, whereas intelligence (intelligentia) is proper to God’s mind. For God reads all the elements of things whether inner or outer, because He contains and disposes them in order, whereas the human mind, because it is limited and external to everything else that is not itself, is confined to the outside edges of things only and, hence, can never gather them all together. For this very reason it can indeed think about reality, but it can not understand it fully.” Although Vico claims that cogitatio is “proper to the human mind”, he is not arguing that humans should be satisfied with that way of knowing. Rather, educators should view God’s way of knowing–creativity–as a model for human learning for (as Palmer says in her Introduction): “it is only when we produce that we become like God” (34). 

Vico, Giambattista Vico. The New Science. 3rd ed. (1744). Trans., Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994.

• For an interesting discussion about the frontispiece, read: Kunze, Donald. “Vichianism (After Vico).” the art3idea. MS# 757. <http://art3idea.psu.edu/locus/vico.pdf&gt;. 21 Feb 2009.