Before revision: In Giambattista Vico's 1708 oration De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, a contribution to the evolving public debate about the advantages and disadvantages of the early modern academic system compared to that of the classical period (the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns"), Vico invokes the notion of the Lesbian rule to describe what is lacking in the modern system's intense focus on the mechanistic precision of the developing natural sciences:
After revision: In the 19th century, John Henry Newman invokes the Lesbian rule in the introduction to Part I of his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845).In Giambattista Vico's 1708 oration De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, a contribution to the evolving public debate about the advantages and disadvantages of the early modern academic system compared to that of the classical period (the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns"), Vico invokes the notion of the Lesbian rule to describe what is lacking in the modern system's intense focus on the mechanistic precision of the developing natural sciences: