Numbers In Political Science

According to Knox (1952, p. vii), “philosophy is thinking, the thinking of universal.” The traditional thinkers provided us with the deepest philosophic questions and all of the fundamental human queries and concerns. These guiding principles provided questions that political scientists continue to rely on. They have laid out the problems that provided the scholars today with questions in order to make sense of their field. However, universal in their sense is abstract. And since they are in their way normative in practice, where these deep-seated values continue to permeate, there is a problem of precision; there is a problem of their study being indefinite or vague in its methods. Political philosophy strives for knowledge of the nature

The use of numbers would give the political data its transcendental character. Unlike ideas and prescriptions in political philosophy, numbers, used in the scientific study of politics, are universal and can be applied to different epochs. Due to the progression and characteristic of political philosophy, there was shift that would lead the students of politics to political science. With the rise of political science, there emerged with it a subfield, political theory (Chiranjeev, Jacob, & Natarajan, 2013). The progression of political philosophy did not only influence the formation of political science alone but also the emergence of political theory. Political science’s significance to political theory is as the same as political philosophy. It is a supplement of political theory; if political theory is separated to political philosophy, its meaning will appear distorted and irrelevant (Chiranjeev, Jacob, & Natarajan,

Political philosophy tends to provide us with ‘ought to be’ propositions and according to Pareto (cite), ‘ought’ propositions ‘do not correspond to any concrete reality’. The scientific study of politics started with the shift from normative approach to an empirical approach. Positivists stated that the highest form of human knowledge is scientific knowledge (Strauss, year). And this only implies the downturn of the pre-scientific knowledge. Scholars of political thought therefore adopted the methods of the natural sciences that put political analysis in a scientific way where deductive and logical methods were replaced by inductive and precise methods (Gettel, 1914). By using this type of analysis, these scholars of politics have managed to produce clearer concepts. Easton even stated that “a science is as strong as its concepts” (p.29). People, then, tend to prefer a study of politics with strong, clear, and realistic concepts than a study that produces vague, broad, and idealistic