‘The Scientific Status of Political Science’—Rejoinder

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-128
Author(s):  
Claude Ake
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Silver Nitrate ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Main Difficulty ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Status

Since the two critiques [Iain McLean, Samual Postbrief, ‘"The Scientific Status of Political Science” — Two Comments,’ II (1972), 383–8] have little in common, I shall answer them separately beginning with McLean's. The main difficulty with McLean's argument is that he assumes that we know, or can know, that there cannot be a science of politics or, better still, laws of political behaviour as rigorous as the laws of the natural sciences. His assumption is supported by familiar arguments: men are not as passive and as homogeneous as silver nitrate; men have free will and could wilfully go against the predictions of the social scientist if only to show him that their behaviour cannot be predicted.

Corporeal Ontology: Beyond Mind-Body Dualism?

Politics ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Status ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

The definition and boundaries of the political have received considerable attention in recent times in political science, perhaps as a result of the wavering confidence in the scientific status of the knowledge that the discipline creates. However, a conspicuous absence continues to haunt mainstream political science, one that if rectified threatens, in some ways, to broaden both the nature of the political still further and to challenge the very division of knowledge into the social and natural sciences. This absence is the human body and this article seeks to ask after its exclusion and to suggest that its exclusion is both political and needs rectifying. I argue that the exclusion of the body in political science is a consequence of an inadequate ontological short cut, which is accepted (mostly) unquestioningly by political analysts and which has severe epistemological and methodological consequences. I suggest that a more reflective consideration of the body and its dynamic interplay with the mind could offer the discipline a greater understanding of the human subject, as well as alter power-knowledge relations.

Neurological imaging as evidence in political science: a review, critique, and guiding assessment

2006 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin Tingley
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Prise De Décision ◽  
Economic Decision Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Neuroimaging Data ◽  
New Form ◽  
Sciences Sociales

English Political scientists have access to a number of competing methodologies that marshal different forms of evidence for their arguments about political phenomena. Recently a new form of evidence has appeared in political science research and, more frequently, economics: spatially explicit and time-varying neurological activity of human subjects engaged in political or economic decision-making. As with any of the more standard methodologies, this approach carries with it a set of orienting theories linking hypotheses with the types of data induced to support or falsify these theories. While this new form of evidence is exciting, especially for the empirically minded social scientist, it deserves the utmost scrutiny. I provide a review of how neurological imaging is being used in the social sciences and consider several problems and prospects of using neuroimaging data in political science. French Les sciences politiques ont recours à des méthodes de recherche et à des évidences empiriques diverses pour étudier les phénomènes politiques. Récemment, les chercheurs en sciences politiques et plus souvent encore en économie se sont tout particulièrement intéressés à l'activité cérébrale, objectivable dans l'espace et variant dans le temps, de sujets humains en situation de prise de décision politique ou économique. Comme toute autre méthode de recherche, cette approche s'appuie sur des orientations théoriques, qui font le lien entre les hypothèses de recherche et les données destinées à étayer ou invalider ces théories. Si cette approche nouvelle semble prometteuse, tout particulièrement pour les chercheurs à l'esprit empirique, elle mérite d'être examinée en profondeur. L'article fait le point sur l'utilisation des résultats de l'imagerie cérébrale fonctionnelle en sciences sociales et considère les différents problèmes qu'elle pose ainsi que les perspectives nouvelles qu'elle peut offrir en sciences politiques.

A Nomenclature in Political Science

1931 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-627
Author(s):  
Charles H. Titus
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Effective Work ◽  
The Social

A nomenclature is a system of names or signs, or both, used in any field of knowledge. Such systems are of value to scientists in a field if they enable positions to be seen more clearly or distinctions to be drawn more readily.In a recent article, Huntington Cairns says: “There prevails, secondly, confusion with respect to the instrument—linguistics—with which the anthropologist, the jurist, or the social scientist must pursue his investigations and through whose medium he must state his conclusions. … But once the social scientist passes from these simple aspects to the realm of theory, linguistics becomes a problem and it is in his struggle with this problem that he is most envious of the symbolism of the mathematician.”1Confusion and uncertainty appear to be present in several sections of political science. Linguistics is a problem for us in theory; in addition, it is a serious one in teaching and in the field of research.When a problem appears in a field of knowledge which handicaps effective work, experiments are in order, not only to analyze the phenomenon itself, but, in addition, to find ways or means by which the causes producing the unfortunate circumstance may be removed, or at least reduced. Can the apparent confusion and uncertainty among political scientists concerning the meaning of terms, labels, or intellectual positions be reduced? This is an important problem which directs our attention to the possibility of developing a nomenclature for political science.

The Scientific Status of Political Science: A Note on the Oedipus Effect

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-256
Author(s):  
J. S. Sorzano
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Scientific Status

Ian Budge 'A Comment on Self-fulfilling and Self-defeating Predictions’, in this Journal, III (1973), 249–50 attempted to show that, despite objections to the contrary, enduring generalizations about political behaviour can be made even while acknowledging the existence of what Sir Karl Popper has called the ‘Oedipus effect’. Interestingly, Budge proceeds, not by questioning whether change in the level of information leads to change in patterns of behaviour, but by showing that under present conditions the amount of information possessed by the vast majority of the population is sufficiently low to preclude marked alterations of behaviour. A critic, however, might point out that Budge's line of argument leaves open the possibility that future changes in the level and accuracy of the information held by the population will lead them to alter their behaviour and that, consequently, the objection has not really been met. The imaginary critic's response highlights the difficulty of dealing with the so-called Oedipus effect when we proceed from the prevailing approach to the study of politics. I wish to indicate why this may be so, and to suggest a possible solution.

Causation

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-47
Author(s):  
Sierens Vivien ◽  
Ramona Coman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Causal Relationships ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Pluralism ◽  
The Impact

This chapter studies causation, which occupies a central place in the social sciences. In their attempts to understand and explain ‘why’ social, economic, and political phenomena occur, scholars have dealt with causality in many different ways. The way to define and observe causal relationships has always been at the heart of harsh academic debates in social as well as natural sciences. Drawing on distinctive ontological and epistemological standpoints, at least four different understandings of causation have emerged in political science. Most authors have adopted a correlational-probabilistic understanding of causation, but some have preferred a configurational one, while others have adopted a mechanistic or even a counterfactual understanding. To illustrate the concrete methodological challenges generated by this theoretical pluralism, the chapter discusses how scholars have dealt with causality to explain the impact of European integration on domestic policies and institutions.

: Comparative Politics1

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon Bogdanor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War

This chapter examines seven characters in search of a comparative politics: Ostrogorski, the Whig; Bryce, the liberal; Herman Finer, the comparativist; S. E. Finer, the Paretian realist; Philip Williams, the parliamentary democrat; Richard Rose, the social scientist; and Anthony King, the sceptic. While British political scientists may not have originated any grand theories, their contribution to the development of the discipline in the twentieth century can be seen to have been a powerful one. In Britain, the main threat to political science lies not in its being insufficiently ‘professional’, but in the bureaucratization of universities and of research, a process that is bound to prove detrimental to creative work. There has, in addition, been a certain loss of intellectual self-confidence in Britain, parallel perhaps to that loss of national self-confidence which remains the most striking feature of British post-war politics.

Wars, hotel fires, and plane crashes

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN D. KRASNER
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
International System ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Is Theory ◽  
Adequate Research

Alexander Wendt has drawn on an exceptional range of theoretical literature in his effort to reconceptualize the nature of the international system. His discussion of scientific realism ought to be required reading for any student of international relations, or political science for that matter. He puts to rest the notion that constructivism is necessarily postmodern, devoid of an objective referent. In John Searle's felicitous formulation it is possible to have a subjective ontology but an objective epistemology. In emphasizing that all knowledge is theory laden, Wendt underscores the point that facts never simply speak for themselves. In both the social and natural sciences brute empiricism is never an adequate research strategy. Our theories shape the way we see the world but they cannot remake the world in their own image.

The Scientific Status of Political Science: A Comment on Self-fulfilling and Self-defeating Predictions

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-250
Author(s):  
Ian Budge
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Recent Issue ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Comprehensive Theory ◽  
Scientific Status ◽  
Abstract Level

The ability of humans to alter their behaviour in reaction to predictions made about it is listed but not discussed by Ake (in a recent issue of this Journal) as an objection to the possibility of producing testable general laws in political science [Claude Ake, The Scientific Status of Political Science’, n (1972), 109–15, p. 112]. McLean makes this ability the nub of his argument against the possibility of a comprehensive theory of politics and in favour of partial theories [Iain McLean, ‘Comment on “The Scientific Status of Political Science"’, II (1972), 383–4]. Unless the possibility of checking limited generalizations against subsequent behaviour is completely abandoned, however, behavioural reactions of the type cited by McLean seem likely to occur in response to limited as well as to general predictions and thus to constitute as much of an objection to partial theories as to a comprehensive general theory. Philosophically human free will is often cited as an insuperable obstacle to the development of a causal and statistical social science,1 so the question is central to any general discussion of the scientific status of political analysis. Since political scientists happily make limited generalizations, e.g. about voting and coalition behaviour, and at least loosely check them against subsequent behaviour without suffering apparent difficulties, the practical effects of these philosophic objections seem limited. In order to understand why, discussion must descend from the abstract level of free-will versus determinism to some of the conditions which limit behavioural reactions to previously formulated generalizations and predictions:

Finale

The Age of Em ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Common Complaint ◽  
The Social

Over 150 readers have commented on previous drafts of this book. Here are very quick summaries of some of their most common criticisms. Most individual views are of course subtler than these summaries can be. If we include those who declined to read my draft, the most common complaint is probably “who cares?” Many just can’t see why they should want to know much detail about the lives of people who are not they, their children, or grandchildren. While many readers seem interested in the lives of past people who were not personally their ancestors, perhaps these readers make up only a small fraction of the population. Other readers doubt that one can ever estimate the social consequences of technologies decades in advance. It is not so much that these readers have specific complaints about my analyses. Instead, they have a general skepticism that makes them uninterested in considering such analyses. Many see human behavior as intrinsically inscrutable, and many doubt that social science exists as a source of reliable insight. A few are off ended by the very idea of estimating social outcomes, as they see this as denying our free will and ability to choose our futures. A more specific version of this sort of criticism accepts that it is often possible for us to foresee social consequences in worlds like ours, but then says that it is impossible to foresee the social behaviors of creatures substantially smarter than us. So, they reason, we today cannot see past the future point in time when typical descendants become smarter than we are today, and ems are effectively smarter than us in several ways. This view suggests that social scientists today are less able to predict the behavior of smarter people, or of people who are smarter than the typical social scientist. That seems incorrect to me. Still other readers accept my social analysis, but are disappointed that I consider only the next great era, and not the eras that may follow it. These readers mainly care about the long-term future. They reject my argument that understanding the em era is a good first step to understanding the eras that may follow it.

scholarly journals Genopolitics: The dormant niche in political science curriculum in South African universities

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mlamuli N. Hlatshwayo ◽  
Kehdinga G. Fomunyam
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
South African ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
South African Higher Education

South African higher education institutions have been grappling with the challenges of transformation and decolonisation as a result of the 2015–2016 student protests calling into focus issue of access (both formal and epistemological), belonging, social justice, transformation and others. One of the key sites for this struggle for transformation has been curriculum and the notion of relevance in responding to the development of social reality. Political Science as a discipline has increasingly been confronted with an ‘existential crisis’ with scholars in the field asking critical questions on whether the discipline has reached a point of irrelevance to social reality. Three key critiques of political science as a discipline are discussed in this article – firstly, the critique that political science is obsessed with what has been termed ‘methodological fetishism’ in being unable to embrace new knowledge. Secondly, that political science tends to construct universal theories and concepts that assume global homogeneity and de-emphasise the importance of context and locality in knowledge, knowledge production and its experiences. Thirdly, and the central point of this article, the social disconnection between political science as a field and its [in]ability to make a socio-economic contribution to society. This article suggests that genopolitics allows us to critically reflect on and respond to the above notions of relevance in political science by looking at the role of genes played in political behaviour and genetic dispositions to see and analyses how people, communities and societies behave in the ways that illuminate our understanding of social reality.

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