ABSTRACT
Students of political science have in recent years tended to be critical of both the direction and the achievements of the discipline. The upshot of the change from positivism to realism among the philosophers of science is that it has now become possible to qualify as a scientist without being a positivist. Philosophies of science are not, however, bricks that exist in absolute isolation from one another. The movement from one philosophy of science to another therefore proceeds not in a single step, but in an incremental revaluation of individual tenets. Scientists schooled in the classics of positivism have an acquired resistance to the idea of a philosophy of science that changes over time because positivists presented themselves, inadvertently or not, as advocates of a universal method, one that was not transient but more or less absolute.
