Which Italian philosopher wrote 'The New Science' (Scienza Nuova)?

Giambattista Vico wrote The New Science (Scienza Nuova), his major work on the philosophy of history.

Vico first published the book in 1725, when he was a professor of rhetoric in Naples. He revised it substantially for editions published in 1730 and 1744; the last edition appeared after his death. Its full Italian title described a new science concerned with the shared nature of nations.

Vico argued that societies develop through recurring historical patterns rather than through a simple, permanently upward march of progress. His famous sequence of divine, heroic, and human ages linked political institutions, language, mythology, and social customs. He also used the idea of ricorso, or recurrence, to describe the return of earlier conditions in new forms.

A common mix-up is to associate the title with Francis Bacon or with modern empirical science. Vico’s “new science” was instead an interpretive study of how human cultures create their own institutions and meanings. The work later influenced historicism, sociology, anthropology, and thinkers such as Jules Michelet and Benedetto Croce.