 Vico's ideas, whilst permeated by his own penchant for etymology, and a theory of cyclical history ("corsi e ricorsi)," are significant nonetheless for the underlying premise that our understanding and knowledge of social structure is dependent upon the ideas and concepts we employ and the language used.Vico, mostly unknown in his own time, was the first to establish the foundations of a sociology of knowledge even if his concepts were not necessarily picked up by later writers.There is some evidence that Montesquieu and Karl Marx had read Vico's work.