Amsterdam, Netherlands

Political Science: Political Theory

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: social
Time study: 1 year
University website: www.uva.nl/en
Political Science
Political science is a social science which deals with systems of governance, and the analysis of political activities, political thoughts and political behavior. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics which is commonly thought of as determining of the distribution of power and resources. Political scientists "see themselves engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions, and from these revelations they attempt to construct general principles about the way the world of politics works."
Science
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Theory
A theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking. Depending on the context, the results might, for example, include generalized explanations of how nature works. The word has its roots in ancient Greek, but in modern use it has taken on several related meanings.
Theory
All men suppose what is called Wisdom to deal with the first causes and the principles of things; so that, as has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any sense-perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience, the masterworker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of Wisdom than the productive.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982a1, Complete Works, vol. 2, p. 1553
Theory
Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision.
Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies (1993), "More Light on Leaves".
Science
Within the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development (1893) p. 490, Tr. Thomas J. McCormack.
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