We Have a Firm Foundation 79
can be achieved only by distinguishing or isolating certain properties in the subject matter
studied and by ascertaining the repeatable patterns of dependence in which these proper-
ties stand to one another. In consequence, when the inquiry is successful, propositions that
hitherto appeared to be quite unrelated are exhibited as linked to each other in determinate
ways by virtue of their place in a system of explanations’ (see Nagel 1961: 4).
- It is worth noting the fuller quotation. Mitchell looked forward to the rosy prospect of
a political theory in which ‘Models of political systems analogous to types of economies
and markets will proliferate...Statistical testing of models involving election results and
governmental budgets, will become the major enterprise...For sometime we shall be able
to make do with verbal, geometric and algebraic models, but eventually the economist
will overwhelm with higher level mathematical statements’, Mitchell in Lipset (ed.) (1968:
129–30).
- The postbehavioural movement had ‘its birth in efforts to cope with some of the unresolved
problems generated by behaviouralism: the indifference to moral judgements; the excess-
ive commitment to formal mathematicized statements flowing from the use of scientific
methods; the focus on theoretical criteria to the neglect of social issues; the preoccupation
with social forces as determinants of behaviour, overlooking, in the process, important
cognitive (rational) elements; and a profound forgetfulness about the history of political
systems that helps to shape their present’, Easton in Farr and Seidelman (eds.) (1993: 306).
- The assertions made in the general programme are well summarized by Mary Hesse as
follows: 1. In natural science data [are] not detachable from theory, for what count as
data are determined in the light of some theoretical interpretation, and the facts are deter-
mined in the light of some theoretical interpretations, and the facts themselves have to be
reconstructed in the light of interpretations. 2. In natural science theories are not models
externally compared with nature in a hypothetico-deductive schema, they are the way the
facts themselves are seen. 3. In natural science the law-like relations asserted of experience
are internal, because what counts as facts are constituted by what the theory says about
their inter-relations with one another. 4. The language of natural science is irreducibly
metaphorical and inexact, and formalizable only at the cost of distortion of the historical
dynamics of scientific development and of the imaginative constructions in terms of which
nature is interpreted by science. 5. Meanings in natural science are determined by theory;
they are understood by theoretical coherence, see Hesse (1981: 171–2).
- This body of argument has been explored by a number of thinkers. For many Anglo-
phone philosophers Davidson’s article ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ has been
deeply influential. Davidson speaks of the ‘myth of the given’ in much theorizing, and that
we should abandon the basically Cartesian and Kantian distinction between a conceptual
schemeandreality. The term ‘myth of the given’ appears, however, to have been first
coined by the American philosopher Wilfred Sellars. As Davidson argues, ‘In giving up the
dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and
science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth...Given the dogma of dualism
of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without
the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth of sentences remains
relative to language, but that is as objective as can be’, see Davidson (1973–4: 20).
- This is a fairly short exposition of rational choice. However, a slightly longer analysis of
a sophisticated ‘political theory’ rendition of rational choice can be found in Part Two
Chapter 4 in a discussion of David Gauthier’s work.
- Thus, rational choice writers will often see their roots in the classical eighteenth century
economic perspective of, for example, Adam Smith. Others, such as David Gauthier or
