Читать книгу Political Science For Dummies - Marcus A. Stadelmann - Страница 42

For centuries, the social sciences, of which political science is a part of, felt inferior to the natural sciences because they weren’t considered real or hard sciences, in the same boat as physics or chemistry, because they didn’t have any grand theories. Grand theories, which are universal in nature, are the backbone of the natural sciences. Unless you have grand theories, you’re not a real science. Physical laws, for example, transcend time and hold true everywhere. Now that is a real science.

Political science especially didn’t have any of these grand theories. So during the behavioralist period, it set out to get a few. Systems theory, an example being the Theory of Hegemonic Stability, which I discuss in Chapter 8, and culture theories, such as the Civic Culture Theory, which I cover in Chapter 3, come close to grand theory in political science. Using grand theories and being truly objective in research can qualify the discipline as a natural or real science.