ABSTRACT
According to the tradition of rhetoric one of the most important moments in the composition of discourse was that of inventio, that is, the ingenious and creative finding of the ‘places’, or loci, from where to draw all the relevant arguments about the particular subject matter in question (Cicero 1949a: I.7; 1949b: 6 ff). This search required the ability to move along all the different points of view and to judge their pertinence and verisimilitude, to find the right ideas in each particular case (Quintilian 1920: III.3 5-7). This particular aspect of rhetoric was known as ars topica. The great Humanist Giambattista Vico, one of the canonical authors of this tradition, thought of it as a sort of first operation of the mind. Indeed, Vico considered topica:
an art of regulating well the primary operation of our mind, by noting the commonplaces that must all be gone over in order to know all there is in a thing that one desires to know well; that is, completely.
