scholarly journals The “Absence of Chance” and the “Serving of Ends”

Spectrum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quah Say Jye
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Principles

Aristotle’s concept of nature, captured in quotations such as “nature does nothing in vain” and “man by nature is a political animal,” is a topic consistently discussed within scholarly literature. This paper’s primary aim is to demonstrate how Aristotle’s concept of nature underpins his political theory. It first uncovers Aristotle’s concept of nature, then it demonstrates how this concept underpins his political principles. Aristotle’s concept of nature is first broken down to two ideas: the “absence of chance,” which describes the regularity and permanence of phenomena, and the “serving of ends,” which explains Aristotle’s teleological approach. As such, Aristotle’s nature is used both to describe and explain phenomena, and therefore it shows both how and why certain phenomena occur. Armed with this understanding of nature, this paper shows how Aristotle applies this concept of nature to derive two political principles - the “principle of rulership” and the “social instinct.” These political principles in turn underpin his political theory and approach to political science. This paper shows that, through an understanding of Aristotle’s concept of nature, we can better understand the foundation of his politics.

Social Science and Ideology

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Gunnell
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Reform Movements ◽  
Cognitive Authority ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

The origins of the social sciences were in ideologies associated with moral philosophy and social reform movements. The turn to science was initially to secure the cognitive authority to speak truth to power about matters of social policy. This heritage was particularly salient in the controversy about behaviouralism in American political science. The debate between what was becoming mainstream political science and a growing number of individuals in the subfield of political theory was actually less about whether the discipline could emulate the methods of natural science than about an underlying conflict between competing visions of democracy. This was to some extent the residue of a dispute, which began in the 1920s, between pluralism as the basis of a theory of democracy and a more communitarian image, but it was also a reflection of more recent work in political philosophy as well as ideological differences in the American political context.

On Political Theory, the Humanities, and the Social Sciences

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1083-1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Foa Dienstag
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Science Departments

Sometimes political theorists like to imagine that they are lonely humanists misplaced in social science departments. In fact, political theory was created as part of a political science composed of both humanistic and social-scientific elements. Rather than trying to locate political theory somewhere between the humanities and the social sciences, we should instead dismantle the boundary between the two and create a unified discipline of questioning that embraces both kinds of inquiry.

Disciplining Polenta: A Parody on the Politics of Saving Food

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Zachary Nowak ◽  
Bradley M. Jones ◽  
Elisa Ascione
Keyword(s):  
Food Products ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Traditional Food ◽  
Traditional Foods ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Identity Creation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This article begins with a parody, a fictitious set of regulations for the production of “traditional” Italian polenta. Through analysis of primary and secondary historical sources we then discuss the various meanings of which polenta has been the bearer through time and space in order to emphasize the mutability of the modes of preparation, ingredients, and the social value of traditional food products. Finally, we situate polenta within its broader cultural, political, and economic contexts, underlining the uses and abuses of rendering foods as traditional—a process always incomplete, often contested, never organic. In stirring up the past and present of polenta and placing it within both the projects of Italian identity creation and the broader scholarly literature on culinary tradition and taste, we emphasize that for so-called traditional foods to be saved, they must be continually reinvented.

Between the Social and the Political

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
Pia Rowe ◽  
David Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conventional Theory ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Language

While Wood and Flinders’ work to broaden the scope of what counts as “politics” in political science is a needed adjustment to conventional theory, it skirts an important relationship between society, the protopolitical sphere, and arena politics. We contend, in particular, that the language of everyday people articulates tensions in society, that such tensions are particularly observable online, and that this language can constitute the beginning of political action. Language can be protopolitical and should, therefore, be included in the authors’ revised theory of what counts as political participation.

Twin Studies and Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Levente Littvay
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Behavioral Genetics ◽  
Twin Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Genetic Transmission ◽  
The Social ◽  
Direction Of Causation ◽  
Social Part ◽  
The Impact

As recently as 2005, John Alford and colleagues surprised political science with their twin study that found empirical evidence of the genetic transmission of political attitudes and behaviors. Reactions in the field were mixed, but one thing is for sure: it is not time to mourn the social part of the social sciences. Genetics is not the deterministic mechanism that social scientists often assume it to be. No specific part of DNA is responsible for anything but minute, indirect effects on political orientations. Genes express themselves differently in different contexts, suggesting that the political phenomenon behavioral political scientists take for granted may be quite volatile; hence, the impact of genetics is also much less stable in its foundations than initially assumed. Twin studies can offer a unique and powerful avenue to study these behavioral processes as they are more powerful than cross-sectional (or even longitudinal) studies not only for understanding heritability but also for asserting the direction of causation, the social (and, of course, genetic) pathways that explain how political phenomena are related to each other. This chapter aims to take the reader through this journey that political science has gone through over the past decade and a half and point to the synergies behavioral political science and behavioral genetics offer to the advancement of the discipline.

Microcomputers in Political Science

1983 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Herbert F. Weisberg
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Turnaround Time ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Batch Mode ◽  
New Era ◽  
Large Scale Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Frequency Counts

We are now entering a new era of computing in political science. The first era was marked by punched-card technology. Initially, the most sophisticated analyses possible were frequency counts and tables produced on a counter-sorter, a machine that specialized in chewing up data cards. By the early 1960s, batch processing on large mainframe computers became the predominant mode of data analysis, with turnaround time of up to a week. By the late 1960s, turnaround time was cut down to a matter of a few minutes and OSIRIS and then SPSS (and more recently SAS) were developed as general-purpose data analysis packages for the social sciences. Even today, use of these packages in batch mode remains one of the most efficient means of processing large-scale data analysis.

Reworking Effectiveness: Art as a Politic of Redistribution – Some Remarks from a Polish Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-574
Author(s):  
Tomasz Załuski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Activities ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
General Economy

Abstract This article critically reworks the issue of the social impact of art in terms of its ‘effectiveness’. The study shows art’s general economy by taking into account a number of ambivalences, difficulties, and deficiencies related to art activities that turn towards the social, political, economic, and cultural exterior of the field of artistic production. Finally, it tries to mount a careful, complex, and balanced defense of their potentials. Reframing and grounding the discussion on artistic activism in selected concepts from political theory, the author argues that if artistic practices are to be socially effective, art needs to be understood and practiced as a politic of redistribution. A way of practicing such a politic is to be sought in understanding and performing action as susceptible to interception. This entails responsibility for the usage of an action, for co-actions that accompany it, and for potential alliances with intercepting subjects.

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