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Man is by nature a political animal.
AristotleThis division of labour … is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.
Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature … or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to enquire. It is common to all men and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts.
Adam SmithAristotle, observing the Greeks in the fourth century b.c., thought that man's natural proclivities were toward discourse and political activity. Adam Smith, observing the Scots in the eighteenth century a.d., saw instead a propensity to engage in economic exchange. From the observations of these two intellectual giants, two separate fields in the social sciences have developed: the science of politics and the science of economics.
Traditionally, these two fields have been separated by the types of questions they ask, the assumptions they make about individual motivation, and the methodologies they employ. Political science has studied man's behavior in the public arena; economics has studied man in the marketplace. Political science has often assumed that political man pursues the public interest.
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