ABSTRACT
Sociology identified the descriptive versus the prescriptive roots of sociology as a science and of sociology as an ideology. Socialism of a left and right persuasion was in the air, and sociology could hardly escape such new trends in the social reconstruction of society. The "bottom up" faith of sociology in contrast to the "top down" emphasis of political science has led to a condition in which these two claimants to scientific status have become part of the problem no less than alternative frameworks for solutions. The paired polarities of objectivity-subjectivity, experience-intuition, empirical-metaphysical, and above all, scientific-ideological continue to serve as leit-motifs in both the creation of a canon and in the special forms of evolution in political sociology.
