Nothing alive is a unity. Political science as a multi-paradigmatic structure of knowledge

Abstract

The weakness of political science lies, among other things, in too strict “discipline” of its representatives, and the failure to notice its relatively low position in the logical structure of knowledge about man as a social being. The political scientist from the East wall, who fought in all ways for the position of the wisest discipline chief, reminded us of such a problem. However, the common understanding of the political science’s specificity issue results from a misunderstanding of the two logics of each science: practical logic, subordinate to the organization of research and didactic process, and explanatory logic, which requires referring to the general, theoretical knowledge. As Jan Woleński, the philosopher of science, writes, “the problem is not what the subject or method of discipline is but whether the acquired knowledge is represented by a set of sentences constituting a theory or not.” Woleński sneeringly adds that “attempts to assign a specific object to each known discipline leads to rather grotesque results,” for then, “we could distinguish over four thousand specific aspects of the subject, and, besides, we should leave something for the future development of science.” In such perspective, the essential and the most challenging task is to merge the knowledge dispersed in many research paradigms, additionally developed in institutional fringes of various social sciences, coherently – i.e., logically and in terms of content. Here, we deal with Wallerstein’s problem – as understood in Węsierski’s works – i.e., the problem of transdisciplinary research strategy.