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“The Divine Science”: Political Engineering in American Culture*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Austin Ranney
Austin Ranney*
Affiliation:
The University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Abstract

The American polity's designers proceeded from what John Adams called “the divine science of politics”—an approach very close to that of modern empirical political science. It was rooted in their conviction that truth is best discovered by the systematic investigation of experience; they investigated experience with methods primitive by modern standards but advanced for the eighteenth century; they applied their findings to the design of political institutions; and they regarded all institutions as experimental, to be revised when experience indicates. This faith in political and social engineering has remained ever since a major element in American political culture. It has recently been shaken by Vietnam, Watergate, and other systemic failures; but it is still far preferable to alternative faiths, especially if we today can cool our rhetoric, moderate our expectations, and recapture the pragmatic, experimental mood of those who created “the divine science.”

Type
APSA Presidential Address
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 140 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1976

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Footnotes

*

Many of the ideas presented here were generated in talks with various colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences during 1974–75. In addition, I am grateful to Joseph A. Ranney III for reading the manuscript and making many welcome contributions. All share much of the credit but none of the blame for its final version.

References

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