The Myth of Hyperfactualism in the Study of American Politics

Abstract

To introduce his work on functionalism, Robert Merton' employs that intriguing phrase of Whitehead's: A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost. If Whitehead meant to caution against allowing past generations to impose their stencils upon an unknown future,2 who, in a scientific domain, can possibly quarrel with this injunction? But Whitehead also remarked (as Merton noted) that everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it. Whether so or not, it is germane to my purpose to change some wording and suggest that everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not name it. In substituting the act of naming for that of discovery, I mean to emphasize the crucial importance of close inquiry into the logic and procedure of analysis. For a science which forgets its founders too soon may lose in considerable measure. What it loses it must again find, often at great waste of time and energy. The title of this paper was selected with this in mind. It has to do also with the altogether too hasty use of such terms as hyperfactualism and traditionalism. These have become synonyms in contemporary political science and they are used to refer to a mode of inquiry which employs real types, whose research is in-