Elements of Political Science

The best books of political science are broad in scope, logical, and well grounded in the facts of political life. Like Plato and Aristotle, recent respected political scientists regard the field of politics as covering the most important problems of community living. The study of the form these important problems take is political science, and the study of political science, like the other sciences, rests on facts. Today we have increasingly accurate means of gathering and analyzing facts. Field surveys, sample polling, and intricate systems of punch-card tabulation and analysis are several of the techniques for studying human behavior that annually increase our reliable knowledge and make possible a better political science than had our predecessors. If we accept the good life as defined by great moral philosophers like Aquinas, Spinoza, or Jefferson, we have readier ways than they had of demonstrating how such a good life may be achieved. There are exciting possibilities in the future of political science, and it hoped that this book will help to reveal them.