Just Don't Call It Political 'Science'

I am not a huge fan of the disciplinary moniker “political science.” It breathes too much of the goofy scientism of the late 19th and 20th Centuries, when science was “Science!” Even today “science” is taught in K-12 as a body of indisputable content – because, after all, it's “Science!” – rather than as an epistemologically humble process of puzzle solving, one that revolves around answering the child-like question, “why?” regarding patterned, observable phenomena.

On observing the apple falling to the ground, Newton wondered why the apple fell down, as opposed to falling up. I've joked that if Newton had been into “qualitative methods” (as they are now called), rather than ultimately positing the theory of gravity as a solution to the puzzle, he instead would have generated a monograph titled, “The Apple Falls: A Case Study, ” and would have been promptly forgotten. Deservedly so.