We Have a Firm Foundation 53through the open use of reason, in order to perceive identifiable and verifiable causal
patterns. There was, in other words, a greater appetite for empirical facts concern-
ing nature, human nature, and society. Theorists were often inspired by success of
Newtonian physics, and the new ‘experimental philosophy’, in searching for these
patterns. There were, for these diverse writers, therefore parallels between the sci-
ence of nature and the science of politics. For Hume, for example, ‘It is universally
acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations
and ages, and that human nature remains the same, in its principles and operations.
The same motives always produced the same actions: The same events follow from
the same causes’ (Hume 1975: 83). Inconstancy of human action was ‘no more than
what happens in the operation of the body, nor can we conclude anything from the
one irregularity, which will not follow equally from the other’ (Hume 1981, Book II,
Part III, Section 1: 403–4). Thus, theorists, such as Hume, Turgot, and Montesquieu,
believed in the possibility of causal social laws. Political science was also viewed as an
‘applied science’, which could spawn social projects for social and political improve-
ment. It could potentially show how to increase the happiness of state populations.
Thus, as many theorists of the period urged, every government concerned to max-
imize the pleasure and minimize the pain of its citizens, should take serious note of
political science. This early conception of political science was though still inclus-
ive of—what we would now regard as—separate disciplines. Sound moral precepts
were regarded as both morally obligatory and empirically correct, that is, for human
nature to achieve its political ends. Political science was consequently regarded as a
subtle blending of moral and empirical generalizations. Only political economy came
nearer to what we might now regard as ‘empirical science’, namely, creating empirical
generalizations, which did not have to be necessarily linked with moral precepts.^35
The second view of political science reflects the development of the idea of polit-
ical studies in the late nineteenth century. This use of political science traded on a
perception of the classical Greek view, where political science was, quite literally, the
‘science of the polis’. Political science was therefore a basic synonym for both classical
political theory and institutional theory. There was, though, a growing awareness of
the significance of political science as a more uniquely empirical approach, but it was
still regarded with scepticism. Ernest Barker (the first professor of political science
in Britain) noted, in his inaugural lecture, that ‘I am not altogether happy about the
term “science”. It has been vindicated so largely, and almost exclusively, for exact and
experimental study of natural phenomena...I shall use it, as Aristotle...to signify
a method or form of inquiry by the name of Political Theory’ (Barker in King (ed.)
1978: 18). In this sense, theorizing about politics meant the systematic linkage of
ideas about politics. Barker, and many others, considered that this is what Plato’s and
Aristotle’s work on politics had been concerned with. Such a science blended empir-
ical and more abstract normative considerations. This use of political science also
characterized theStaatslehretradition up to the 1920s, in Europe and North America.
Political science thereforemeantsystematic institutional political theory. However,
Staatslehreitself also began to be regarded as suspect during this later period. Given
that it tended to unify legal, political, historical, and philosophical ideas, it also