Abstract

Giambattisa Vico's epistemological theory is reconstructed as an integrative theory of making and knowing and related to implications for human and organizational study. Explication of making and knowing creates a paradigm to explain the development of consciousness both individually and collectively. And because human institutions are created through human actions, the Vichian paradigm can also be applied to the study of organizations. ;Vico's treatment of imagination has consequences of great importance in the field of human development. It overturns the traditional hierarchial conception of consciousness which defines humans as "rational animals" and replaces it with a genetic conception of consciousness which understands thought in terms of its genesis in imagination. Vico's treatment of imagination has implications for the field of organization development, as well. The concept of organizational making and knowing implies the possibility of demystifying organizational life and the developmental process it moves through--creating an analogic model of transformative social and organizational change. ;The study is built around two original insights in the works of Vico: imagination not reason, is the foundation of human thought, and knowing, in a universal and reflective sense, is possible only when the object of knowledge has been made by the same intelligence that knows the object. ;Vichian thought explicates the relationship between the particularity of experience and the universality of knowledge. What distinguishes Vico from more recent theorists is his recognition that the origin of consciousness is in imagination. Three themes underscore the originality of Vico's view: the precedence of mythical or pre-logical thought to reason, the fundamentally creative power of mind and the cultural basis of mind. The theory of making and knowing is reformulated by connecting Verene's interpretation of Vico's theory of imagination and Caponigri's interpretation of Vico's theory of history. ;The study argues that by grounding knowledge in imagination and in certain customs, Vico restores human subjectivity and spirituality to the pervue of knowledge. Therefore, Vichian thought provides for the human and social sciences a more comprehensive theory of knowledge than either the abstract rationalism or the empiricism upon which contemporary science is based