Research Information System
Filosofija, Sociologija, vol.37, no.1, pp.6-14, 2026 (AHCI, SSCI, Scopus)
This paper examines Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova as an epistemological alterna-tive to the algorithmic rationality underlying artificial intelligence. Grounded in Vico’s verum-factum principle that humans can only truly know what they have created, it argues that data-driven models distort knowledge by detaching it from its historical and creative origins. Through a comparative analysis of Baconian empiricism and Car-tesian rationalism, the study demonstrates how Vico synthesises these traditions into a hermeneutic methodology centred on the mondo civile: the human-made world of meanings, laws and institutions. By uniting philologia (the domain of historical particu-lars) with philosophia (the pursuit of universal truths) within a dynamic interpretive circle, Vico establishes the autonomy of the human sciences against technological re-ductionism. His concepts of sensus communis (communal understanding) and ingenium (contextual judgment) reveal why algorithms can simulate but not comprehend mean-ing. The article concludes that Vico’s human-centred framework offers an indispensa-ble foundation for preserving interpretive understanding in the digital age.