The invention of political science

This dissertation tells the story of how political philosophy became a science between the thirteenth and the seventeenth century. Unlike the standard account which opposes an early conception of political knowledge as a kind of practical or skill knowledge to a later conception of political knowledge as a theoretical science, it is argued that there was a theoretical science of politics from the thirteenth century on, after politics was adopted as a subject fit for university teaching.; The change in the conception of political science over this period came thus not from its formulation as a theoretical discipline but through its relationship to natural philosophy and medicine. The dissertation shows how conceptions of political science came to resemble natural philosophy more and more over this period. At first, authors such as Albert the Great were concerned that the new theoretical explanatory science of politics not resemble natural philosophy. Albert's insistence that such a science be explanatory as well as ethical led to his criticism of the method of the best regime and an appreciation of empiricism. These themes, it is argued, were echoed in the Florentine Renaissance, where thinkers such as Machiavelli and Guicciardini are shown to be more continuous with the thinking of the thirteenth century than usually realized.; The position which conceived of politics (and human action more generally) as distinct from natural phenomena and its study thus distinct from that of natural philosophy gradually gave way over the sixteenth century. This transformation is especially visible in the context of astrological explanations of political behavior, which discussed politics in terms of the natural philosophy of the day. Astrological explanation introduced efficient and material cause explanation into politics, thus making it resemble natural philosophy more closely. This resemblance was also furthered by a group of professors of medicine in Germany who applied the methods of generalization about empirical phenomena to politics. These methods included "for the most part" reasoning, a forerunner of modern probabilistic methods. Taken together, this new sort of causal explanation of political behavior and the methods of empirical generalization constituted a new science of politics.