Vico, Descartes, and decay of knowledge in software
The article discusses the philosophical ideas of Vico in relation to knowledge and the nature of objects. It contrasts Vico's views on intentionality and design in human-made artifacts with contemporary understandings of natural evolution. The author explores the implications of these ideas for software engineering and the representation of knowledge in systems.
- ▪Vico's philosophy emphasizes the importance of intentionality and design in understanding human-made objects.
- ▪The article argues that knowledge about artifacts should include their history and the rationale behind their changes.
- ▪The author suggests that preserving the maker's knowledge could enhance how we describe systems in software engineering.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
I understand how someone who heard something about relativity would try to adopt the unified space-time into their epistemology, if only motivated by "what if". It impresses me how a rhetorics teacher of the early 18th-century came up with this, couple of hundred years before Einstein and Minkowski. Vico already treats a man-made object not as a snapshot, but basically as a continuous slice of time, filled with changes. This echoes the perdurantist approach, and goes even further. But I have to be careful in my claims here. First, Vico lived in a world before Darwin. At that time, virtually everyone believed that nature had a design and a purpose.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Rubber-duck-typing.
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