Term 1 of the 2018 Winter Session marks my 5th year (oof), and last semester in my undergraduates degree at the University of British Columbia. And truthfully, I am very eager to finish up my time here. With that in mind, I’d like to say that it is not my intention to use this small assignment to suck-up to anybody or appear as a highly organized, decisive, all-star student to my peers. I am actually terribly disorganized in most facets of life, but somehow I always manage to always get through it all. Anyway, what I mean to be getting at is that I’ll be completely honest regarding why I enrolled in this specific course: it is an ideal fit for my schedule. Truthfully, I am a student from a working class background with no financial support outside government lenders, so I work just as much as I study to stay above water. So honestly, I believe at the time I signed up, which was very early in the registration period, there was no description or assigned instructor for the course, all I knew was this: it fit my schedule, my degree requirements and had something to do with ‘International Relations Theory and the International System’.
But that isn’t to say that I haven’t come to find this course interesting in the mere 3 classes that we have had up to this date. In fact, although I fear I’ll come off as a total ass kisser, I have actually come to find this course has rapidly become the most engaging course of this semester. This source of engagement has come from something that I have recognized over the years, but until now I never heard a professor so bluntly admit to in front of a pack classroom: Political Science (IR as an extension of it), and the Social Sciences in general are theory rich, but despite hundreds of years of theorizing is still lacking in empirical evidence. In fact, even though the social sciences are rapidly losing prestige, it seems we are determined to stay in our ivory towers and not actually engage the real world. Even more, the amount of theory with no empirical evidence only continues to increase with every new generation of student and professor.
I entered UBC and selected Political Science as my specialization before I ever took an International Relations course. However, I eventually did enrolled in my first International Relations course, Security Studies, by my 3rd year. The course was heavily steeped in Realism, with Mearsheimer’s ‘The Tragedy of Great Power Politics’ being the main reading and the primary focus of much of the course. At that time I thought I had found a more empirical stream of political science, but it was soon evident IR suffered exactly the same infliction of the political sciences. That is, constant theory, but a total lack of consensus based empirical evidence. I’ll admit I still find IR more scientific in comparison to Political Science, nonetheless, my disillusionment only continued.
Nonetheless, I wouldn’t say that I am totally against the course the social sciences have taken, it very likely it is completely impossible for the human mind to understand society to the point of developing universal laws in regards to how it functions like the natural sciences have with subjects like biology, chemistry and physics etc. And as such it is may be only once technology has progressed to the point computation power has far surpassed the capabilities of the human mind for it to be possible for us to come up with concrete predictions of human social outcomes.
These day there is more harmony in my outlook. And that is despite this course having reinforced some of the conclusions I have made during my own intellectual journey over the past 5 years. That is, I still believe in the importance of the social sciences. It helps us critically engage the world, it shapes our along with the public’s opinions, and it certainly informs policy outcomes. It also has the power to shape societies abstract thinking and intellectually progress our society forward. But we have far more in common with the humanities, and especially philosophy that I think the average social scientist wants to openly admit. In the end, maybe we are better off calling ourselves social philosophers? However, I, a mere undergraduate can’t make that final judgment.
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