Hollywood applauds Glendon Schubert's script for a possible soap opera in his pre-view of Approaches to the Study of Political Science. Stereotypic characters, miscasting of actors, words put in the mouths of fictitious persons, and maudlin grief are all present in his poignant ad hominen remarks, while a task which I regard as important — the development of a science of politics — is curiously overlooked by Mr. Schubert as the main purpose of the volume. And, in a manner similar to David Easton's eloquent 1969 presidential address, it is important to tune out Mr. Schubert's solipsistic One Man's Family and to discuss instead the real reasons for all the current fuss about postbehavioral options.

My own view is that political science has achieved considerable maturity as a discipline in recognizing a fundamental symbiosis between three facets of science as the 1970's begin. At one level, a scientist may seek to describe an individual case, to calibrate measuring Instruments, and to engineer specific changes in the real world. At a second level a scientist can search for relationships between two or more variables across several cases in order to state generalizations that will serve as guides to the future and to cases as yet unexamined. Yet myriad generalizations do not cumulatively add up to higher and higher levels of scientific achievement until we consider a third facet of science, wherein one seeks analytical explanations for empirical findings and smooths out the idiosyncracies of particular research investigations into analytically parsimonious paradigms, models, and theories concerning how the world is put together. These three levels or types of science may be called clinical, empirical, and theoretical, respectively.