| Theory in the field of international relations is based on multiple epistemological views, a situation referred to as one of "multiple paradigms." Incommensurable epistemologies render cumulation of knowledge in international relations problematic.;At the heart of the controversy over epistemology is this issue: can the field of international relations acquire the attributes of science? Following World War II until the mid 1970s, many social scientists attempted to position their subjects in the scientific tradition. The major instrument was the adoption of the epistemology and methodology of the sciences, especially classical physics. The epistemology was explicitly deterministic, following Newton, Laplace, Saint-Simon, and the philosophy of science known as positivism. Social scientists called their effort the behavioral movement and argued that only observable behavior could be scientifically studied. Research was directed toward the discovery of regularities and laws.;Critics pointed to the inability of behavioral studies to explain features of the international system, especially change and discontinuities. The critics included traditionally-oriented scholars, normative, relative, and ideological theorists; and, more recently, postmodernist theorists. The force of the critique and the failure of deterministic epistemology led to the abandonment of the goal of adopting the methods and epistemology of the physical sciences to international relations.;The critiques assumed the epistemology was required to be explicitly deterministic and positive. In the natural sciences and mathematics, however, this requirement has come under question, and a new natural science epistemology is replacing traditional Newtonian epistemology.;Researchers in other social sciences are already applying the epistemology and resulting methodology. This emergent scientific epistemology is well-suited to the construction of international relations theory since principal features--nonlinearity, indeterminacy, emergence, conditionality, and complexity--typify the international system. The emergent scientific epistemology is non-behavioral; it acknowledges the importance of phenomena which are not directly observable, including thought. It is argued that international relations scholars should revisit scientific epistemology to return the field to the goal of knowledge cumulation.;An accompanying case study examines how a deterministic model for crisis bargaining could be adapted to produce an emergent model. Mathematical and theoretical appendices are included. |
