2
the history of the social sciences as well as intellectual history in general. At the same
time, it is important both to ask why we should study this history and to confront the
issue of the cognitive and practical relationship between the study of the history of
political science and the contemporary practice of the discipline.
It has been suggested that studying the history of political science is often like
looking through a photograph album of long-deceased and largely forgotten uncles
3
--
and, one might add, very few aunts. We seldom recognize their faces in pictures, and
their place and significance in our lineage is often not apparent. Many of these
individuals do not appear, from our contemporary perspective, to be very noteworthy,
and some represent ideas and claims that we might wish to forget, since they often are
an embarrassment when judged by our standards of political and professional
correctness. When compared, for example, with the commonly mentioned founding
fathers and theoretical icons of sociology such as Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, the
nineteenth century ancestors of political science seem considerably less illustrious.
And while many contemporary political scientists sense a familiarity with individuals
such as Charles Merriam or Woodrow Wilson who were prominent in the early part of
the twentieth century, this recognition tends to be more the product of academic folklore
than direct acquaintance with their work. When political scientists talk about the past of
the field, it is still often a mythologized reconstruction that bears little relationship to the
actual evolution of the academic discipline. If such images are inadequate, it is
3
Gene Poschman, "Emerging Social Science and Political Relevance: Some
Extractions from a Less Than Classic Literature," Paper presented at the 1982 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Denver, Colorado.
Convention