The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico

＂A rich historical pastiche of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, science, and religion.＂-G. Y. Craig, New Scientist

＂This book, by a distinguished Italian historian of philosophy, is a worthy successor to the author’s important works on Francis Bacon and on technology and the arts. First published in Italian (in 1979), it now makes available to English readers some subtly wrought arguments about the ways in which geology and anthropology challenged biblical chronology and forced changes in the philosophy of history in the early modern era. . . . [Rossi] shows that the search for new answers about human origins spanned many disciplines and involved many fascinating intellects-Bacon, Bayle, Buffon, Burnet, Descartes, Hobbes, Holbach, Hooke, Hume, Hutton, Leibniz, de Maillet, Newton, Pufendorf, Spinoza, Toland, and, most especially, Vico, whose works are impressively and freshly reevaluated here.＂-Nina Gelbart, American Scientist

Paolo Rossi is professor of history of philosophy at the University of Florence. In 1985 he was awarded the Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society. His previous books in English include Francis Bacon: From Magic into Science, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early Modern Era.