The Social Sciences: The Root and Route of Political Science

Abstract

The social science has generally been regarded as a category of science that accommodates solely the disciplines which study Man in relation to his social environment for the purpose of formulating laws, generalisations and more importantly to make predictions on the future actions of Man. Distinct as it is from the other category of science i.e. the pure science which accommodates disciplines that study inanimate objects, the social science as one out of the two categories of science is yet to have a universally accepted number of  fields of study that comprises it. But for the sake of this paper, the six major social science disciplines were identified and treated accordingly - Political Science, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Geography. These fields of study as at today can arguably be said to have developed to an appreciable level. Nevertheless, their development, in particular political science, is tied to the other social science disciplines. This paper therefore takes a critical look at the origin of some of the concepts, theories, scholars etc. in political science from the five social science disciplines mentioned above, the present status of political science; as well as the pathway the discipline is following. In this research paper, it was discovered that political science indeed has its root in the other five social science disciplines. But as touching the direction of political science,  the discipline, based on the dynamic nature of Man and social problems, would dwell more on the interdisciplinary approach in order to have a holistic understanding of them, be able to make predictions, solve and if possible, control and forestall the unacceptable actions and occurrence of the former and latter respectively. The historical and comparative approaches were adopted in the course of this study with secondary sources of qualitative data as part of the research methodology.