19
dominance of the epistemological influence over the political circumstances" -- when
the "politics of epistemology" prevailed over the "epistemology of politics." And
Lepawsky asked the reader to keep in mind the question of whether the discipline was
"more `productive'" before or after it became a "`science.'"
21
Lepawsky's essay is significant in several respects. First, although limited in
scope, it was probably the most careful and detailed piece of research on the
intellectual history of the discipline that had appeared. Second, it raised, even more
pointedly than Crick, the important question of the impact of professionalism and
specialization on the discipline and the implications for the relationship between
academic and public discourse. Finally, it pointed up issues regarding the relationship
between "internal" and "external" history. If, for example, the development of the
discipline was, after the turn of the century, shaped more by internal "epistemological"
concerns, broad contextual explanations of its development after that period might be
less significant.
Something of the nature of the Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus volume
might be extrapolated, particularly in view of Crick's argument, from the fact that in the
original printing of the first edition the word "American" was not present in the title. The
book was written at the height of American political science's aspiration to scientific
universalism, but although the "story" told was very much, at least structurally, a tale of
the "rise" of the profession and the evolution of political science, from its earliest
21
Albert Lepawsky, "The Politics of Epistemology," Western Political Quarterly, Supp.
(1964), p. 21-23.
Convention