6Wisdom and Eloquence in the Tacit Dimension: Vico and Polanyi on Knowing and Making

This comparative study searches out intersections in the thought of Giambattista Vico and Michael Polanyi by situating their thought in relation to the history of ideas generally and to the rhetorical tradition specifically. The overarching concern of the essay is the relation between knowing and making truth—or, in rhetorical terms, between wisdom and eloquence. I Vico has been the victim of a good many bad comparative essays. He “has been hailed and promoted as the discoverer of almost every major field of knowledge in the humanities and in the social sciences ” (Mali 1-2). Admittedly, the prevalence of what Mali calls the “Vichian industry ” can be explained by the fact that the Italian humanist talked about a lot of things that happen to concern us today. For example, Vichian ideas appear to align with postmodern critique, because, as Giorgio Tagliacozzo observes, Vico attacked Cartesianism, meshed rhetoric and philosophy, and sought interdisciplinarity (Danesi 182-183). Furthermore, as Robert Miner observes, Vico’s verum-factum insistence that what is true is convertible to what is made appears to align with the postmodern penchant for constructivism.1 But to argue that Vico saw through a glass darkly what postmoderns now see clearly with a wry squint is not only patronizing—it’s modernist. “The claim that generations transition progressively from one distinctive era to the next, the periodization of history, is