Hunting for Fossils in International Relations

Abstract

After all of the ink that has been spilled comparing international relations (IR) to either physics or economics, it is somewhat refreshing to see Douglas Van Belle (2006) turning to a novel source: paleontology, and specifically the study of the dinosaurs and their extinction.1 Van Belle argues that there is much to be learned from how paleontologists deal with problems such as fragmentary data and the impracticality of experimental techniques, as these issues are equally characteristic of IR (ibid: 288). Since paleontologists have been relatively successful—as long as we define “successful” as the establishment of broad consensuses that then provoke further controversies—in generating knowledge about ancient life, Van Belle suggests that IR scholars might profitably adopt some of the scientific practices of paleontologists. But on his excursion through the wilds of the philosophy of (social) science, Van Belle ends up like the hypothetical prospector that he describes as walking “right over” a fossil and failing to spot it (ibid: 290).2 Van Belle spends a lot of time discussing issues like the use of particular data sets and the need for researchers to pose additional observable implications of hypothesized relationships—that is, he spends almost all of his time on questions of method. However, the really important issues at stake in a comparison between IR and paleontology are ontological, and not merely questions of technique. Excavating those more conceptually profound issues and placing them on public display seems a necessary prerequisite to any serious consideration of whether IR should be more like paleontology in its research practices.