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A neglected issue in the study of modernization is how the person transfers his pursuit of ultimate ends and meanings from religious to secular perspectives. If one could speak of a modern paradigm, it would include, at a minimum, commitments to rationalism and immanence. Unifying debates between classical rationalists and empiricists, Marxists and positivists, and idealists and realists, is the notion that some form of human reason is the court of last resort for disputes, whether reason be interpreted deductively, inductively, instrumentally, dialectically, or vitally; and the belief that ultimate meaning resides, if at all, in the public situation or in history. Modern perspectives demand, then, that the person confronts and overcomes in some way religious desires, such as the wills to immortality, plenitude, and eternal justice. Methods must be devised by which these desires are either channeled into political or historical perspectives, transferred from the public to the private realm, or denied altogether.

This article will sketch a political science that is founded on principles different from those underlying the discipline at present. The major thesis is that contemporary American political science is Newtonian and interactionist in orientation in a world in which scientific thought has become field-oriented and transactionist. Political scientists are still primarily concerned with defining abstract units of analysis and exploring the relations among these units, while many natural scientists and even novelists like Lawrence Durrell have advanced to the stage of studying fields of behavior and domains of human activity. What would a transactionist political science look like? What are some of the reasons for adopting such a political science as a starting point for research and analysis?