the eighteenth century revolution in social science and the dawn of political science in America

Abstract

The phrase sciences politiques was first used by Condorcet, and taken up as political science by Jefferson and Hamilton. The American Framers and their critics had to make up political science as they went along, in order to argue for (or against) a federal constitution from first principles. To do so, they drew on Scottish and French social science. We trace the influence of Scots thought (especially that of Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith) and French thought (especially that of Condorcet) on the first generation of political science.