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C. P. Snow, in his Rede Lecture on the scientific and literary worlds as separate cultures, lists four groups needed by a country if it is to "come out top" in the scientific revolution. First, as many top scientists as it can produce; second, a larger group trained for supporting research and high class design; third, educated supporting technicians; and "fourthly and last, politicians, administrators, an entire community, who know enough science to have a sense of what the scientists are talking about."It seems increasingly clear that the growing army of "political" scientists—meaning natural scientists in politics—is more likely to be aided by students of politics prepared to understand the effects of science in political terms than by most of the recent efforts to understand politics in scientific terms. When one looks over the journals in political science, and in related areas of public opinion and social psychology, searching for significant conclusions in articles where much time has been spent on the elaboration of method, it is difficult to avoid V. O. Key's conclusion "that a considerable proportion of the literature commonly classified under the heading of 'political behavior' has no real bearing on politics, or at least that its relevance has not been made clear."

Among the many discussions stirred by recent searchings after the source and substance of a conservative tradition has been that of the place of natural law in the thought of Edmund Burke. One view which has received renewed emphasis is that Burke's natural law is essentially Thomistic. Those who support this view frequently cite Burke's many references to "the law of nations and of nature." The purpose of this paper is to show, by particular reference to the subject of international law, that it is misleading to place Burke in the older natural law tradition. In ideas as well as in time, he stands more nearly at a mid-point between that tradition and the positivist approach to law. Revelation and the interpretive aid of a Universal Church, which were crucial to the traditional concept of natural law, do not play a similar role in Burke's thought. The same meaning, therefore, cannot be attributed to his references to the natural law.