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The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and its Implications for the Study of World Politics

At the core of Patrick T. Jackson’s new book The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations stands the mutual dependency of philosophies of science on the one hand and the study of world politics on the other. Seeking to prepare the ground for a more open and balanced scholarly debate on these issues, Jackson dismisses in his first chapter the very premise that seems to underpin much international relations (IR) scholarship: that there exists such a thing as a single, objectively valid ‘scientific method’ or ‘philosophy of science’ (p. 3). Jackson’s definition of science is instead derived from the work of the German sociologist Max Weber. In Weberian terms, science is a much broader concept. It is ‘the careful and rigorous application of a set of theories and concepts so as to produce a “thoughtful ordering of empirical actuality”’ (p. 193). From this, Jackson identifies the important implication: