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A Challenge to Political Scientists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

William Foote Whyte
William Foote Whyte
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

When the American form of government and our democratic way of life hang in the balance of armed conflict, the political scientist feels impelled more than ever to rally to the defense of these values. He Writes volumes to defend our system and to attack the systems of our enemies. He writes political philosophy and political ethics—just plain politics is forgotten.

The uninformed layman might expect from his title that the political scientist would be an expert in the analysis of political processes in his own community. He would be disappointed. The following comment made by Aristotle centuries ago applies with equal validity to the problem of political science today: “Must we not admit that the political science plainly does not stand on a similar footing to that of other sciences and faculties? I mean that while in all other cases those who impart the faculties and themselves exert them are identical (physicians and painters, for instance), matters of Statesmanship the Sophists profess to teach, but not one of them practices it, that being left to those actually engaged in it: and these might really very well be thought to do it by some singular knack and by mere practice rather than by any intellectual process; for they neither write nor speak on these matters (though it might do more to their credit than composing speeches for the courts or the assembly)….” Since the politician of today remains inarticulate when it comes to discussing his methods for publication, the responsibility of building a science of politics, if there is to be such a science, continues to rest with the political scientists.

Type
Instruction and Research
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , August 1943 , pp. 692 - 697
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1943

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References

* The author of this article is a social anthropologist who arrived at the views which he expresses while endeavoring to probe into the backgrounds of political organization in a slum district. Man Ed.

1 The Nicomachean Ethics (Everyman's ed., London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1940), p. 260.Google Scholar I am indebted to the late Professor L. J. Henderson for drawing my attention to this passage.

2 (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press.)

3 Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930).

4 Government of Cities in the United States (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1939).

5 See The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1931).

6 Machine Politics: Chicago Model (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937). Italics mine.

7 The Pattern of Politics (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1940), p. 3.

8 (New York: McClure, Phillips and Co., 1905.) The book wag written by a newspaper man, William L. Riordon, from conversations with the politician.

9 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. Thesis, 1935). This volume was considered of so little import in political science circles that it was not even reviewed in the Political Science Quarterly.

10 For an extended discussion of this point, see the author's Street Corner Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, to be published in 1943): “Politics and the Social Structure.”