The crown of sciences: Can it be just a science? The journey of political sciences in the 20th century

Naser M. Arif, Zayed University

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of the Social Sciences

Publication Date

1-1-2002

Abstract

Throughout history political science has been recognised as the peak of the hierarchy of disciplines. To Aristotle, politics touches on all the aspects of public life which the rulers should deal with. Therefore, political science, by nature, is not like any other field of knowledge. The history of its development in the twentieth century is a manifestation of this thesis and in fact a realistic reflection of it. From the second half of the nineteenth century until the 1970s, political science has tried to become a discipline just like other social and sometimes natural sciences. Nonetheless, the question is still hanging: Has political science become a discipline independent from other social sciences? Or has the circle been completed and political science, after a century of struggle, is back to the first question? [This study, however, attempts to develop a different approach for studying the evolution of political science in the twentieth century by incorporating three approaches: history of science, sociology of science, and epistemology of science. These approaches will be spun together in the stages of development of political science. These stages are: 1. the stage of independence of political science from other disciplines, like history, philosophy, economy and law, 2. The stage of the shift of political scholarship to a science in the logical positivist sense, and 3. The stage of revision, criticism and post-isms.

Volume

30

Issue

1

First Page

135

Last Page

152

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

Behaviorism, Epistemology, History of science, Politics, Positivism, Post-behaviorism, Post-modernism

Scopus ID

0036257928

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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