History of Economic Analysis part 18. At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter-one of the major figures in economics during the first half of the 20th century-was working on his monumental History of Economic Analysis. A complete history of humankind's theoretical efforts to understand economic phenomena from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. | History of economic analysis 132 and Klemm Vico was professor in Naples professing to teach all the knowable tutto lo scibile . The fact that among other things he was a lawyer and always stressed legal aspects the history of law was to him the history of the human mind is important because it brings out his relation to the philosophers of natural law. The influences that contributed to shaping his thought and the problems raised by the various cases of earlier occurrence of ideas similar to his own are much too complex for us. The Greeks the Roman jurists Grotius the English empiricists Descartes by way of antagonism the scholastics and many other groups would have to be mentioned among them also the Arab historian Abu Said Ibn Khaldun 1332-1406 see de Slane s French trans. of the first introductory part of his history 1863-8 all I know . The only work of Vico s that need be mentioned specifically is Principii di una scienza nuova. 1725 almost rewritten for the 2nd ed. of 1730 . Esquisse presents a definite theory of historical evolution or progress its goal is equality23 and its motive force is the ever-increasing knowledge that the indefinitely perfectible human mind keeps on acquiring. This of course is very poor sociology. But the work is the outstanding example of an uncompromisingly intellectualist view of the historical process. In sharp contrast Montesquieu s Esprit des lois despite inadequate workmanship especially inadequate as to critical use of material is serious sociology. The chief virtue of the latter work both as regards method and performance is that it envisaged historical states of societies and their changes in the light of a number of objective factors 24 which yield realistic explanations and in this sense analytic theories but no simple in particular no rationalist general formula. This was indeed a new departure and methodologically spelled a significant break with natural-law ideas it was sociology based upon actual observation of .
