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BOOK REVIEWS 253 Campanella e Vico. By R. Amerio, G. Di Napoli, A. M. Jacobelli Isoldi, P. Piovani, V. Mathieu, E. Grassi, I. Chaix-Ruy, M. Olivetti. Archivio di Filosofia: Organo dell'Istituto di Studi Filosofici, Roma. Ed. by Enrico Castelli. (Padova: Cedam, 1969. Pp. 203. Paper) It was a bright idea to bring together in a single volume these studies on Campanella and Vico, who are usually treated as more or less isolated scholars working in the margins of the main body of classics in the history of philosophy. Though they lived a century apart, they appear here as contributing, along with Telesio, a substantial resistance to the spread of Cartesian mathematical rationalism. The central essay by Angela Maria Jacobelli Isoldi relates the attempts of Campanella and Vico to correlate their novel studies in "the sensing of things" (which is Campanella's phrase) and verum est ]actum (Vico's famous slogan) with the traditional doctrines of the unity of truth in God and the certainty of universal principles. Grassi shows the strategic importance of Vico's use of Aristotelian "Topics" as an instrument of criticism; and Mathieu explains Vico's preference for the Neoplatonic conception of universals over the usual conception of Platonic ideas because he can reconcile this with the multiplicity of "acts" and "facts." Similarly, according to Di Napoli, CampaneUa had Viewed particular beings (entia) as participating in the Entissimum of God. The essay of Chaix-Ruy is full of interesting references to the influence of Vico on later "atheistic illuminism" and on the theories of progress: Vico appears in the immediate background of Boulanger, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Claude Fauriel, Goethe, Michelet, Fustel de Coulanges, and others. While Vico was thus contributing to a secular philosophy of history and progress, the Augustinian tradition, in which both Campanella and Vico participated, was contributing another element of the Enlightenment that was independent of a philosophy of history: the movements of Molinism, Jansenism, Devotio Moderna were spreading among laymen a type of religious illuminism that not only entered into the secular Enlightenment of the French Revolution but endured into the nineteenth century. This interesting history is discussed critically by Olivetti's long review of two important works by Augusto Del Noce: II concetto di ateismo e la storia della filosofia come problema (Bologna, 1964) and RiIorma cattolica e filosofia moderna, vol. I, Cartesio (Bologna, 1955). This study not only suggests a reinterpretation of Descartes but a theory of "modern Christian." This discussion of Vico, Malebranche, and Bayle is important for a general and critical study of "the ambiguity of a Christian ontologism." H. W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California John Wilkins, 1614-1672: An Intellectual Biography. By Barbara Shapiro. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. Pp. 320. $9.50) Some men are important less for what they do than for what they help others do. John Wilkins was such a man. Not that his speculations about life on the moon, interplanetary space travel, the submarine, and a number of other 'projects', including a universal language, are without interest, but it is clearly his role as the chief popularizer and organizer of scientific activity in seventeenth century England that has gained him a lasting place in ,history. As a member of the 'invisible college' in London in 1645, as Warden of Wadham 254 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY College and leader of the 'Oxford group' (Boyle, Hooke, Wallis, Wren, etc.) between 1648-1658, and as a founding member of the Royal Society after the Restoration, Wilkins is a key figure in the scientific 'movement' which emerged during this period. "I thank God," wrote Robert Hooke, "that Dr. Wilkins was an Englishman, for wherever he had lived, there had been the chief seat of generous knowledge and true philosophy." For Hooke, the relationship between God, Wilkins, and the rise of English science was providential; for others, it has become much more problematical. Nearly forty years ago, it was suggested by Robert Merton that the Puritan 'ethos' had "promoted a state of mind and a value-orientation which invited the pursuit of natural science." 1 Since then, Wilkins' name has been a focal point of controversy. Branded as a Puritan, Wilkins represented for some a...

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