A common Ground for Poli Sci

Greg Mankiw spends so time talking about core beliefs shared by most if not all economists. his point has everything to do with restoring faith in academic economics after watching the interdepartmental fights of the last six months, but a friend of mine raised an interesting issue.

Could a Professor of Political Science make such a claim? could and Anthropologist? could a Historian?

I think the answer is a pretty resounding no, though it could be interesting to try to come up with one. But my instinct is at the end of the day, your ideological bend, or the 'school of thought' to which you belong within these disciplines is just to critical to your understanding of the world to be able to find much in the way of common ground.

Part of me feels that this may begin to touch on what the true split between social science and science lies. Scientist not only agree on the way in which inquiry is pursued (lots of historians share notions about what constitutes valid historical proof as well), but also a key notions about how the universe operates. Regardless of whether you think AIDS research breakthroughs will come from one line of drugs or the other, there is a shared understanding about how the disease functions, what its effects on the host are, and what the end goal of stopping the disease looks like.

Equivalent problems in other fields, like 'the rise of democracy in previously autocratic nation' have to grapple with issues like what democratic process is, how a society becomes democratic, and what a democracy in its final form should look like. While social science may try to incorporate the methods of science, it lacks the level of definitional and mechanical clarity that true science posses.

And that's what makes it fasinating.