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ItIs customary to describe the development of political science since the Second World War as a step toward the creation of an empirical science of politics. Not its empiricism, however, but rather its concern for theory is understood to be the defining characteristic of the new way. The prescientific period was also empirically oriented, but it was naive, unthinking empiricism which treated the acquisition of political knowledge as a matter of collecting political facts as one might collect butterflies. Empiricism became scientific, it is said, only when it became theoretical, when its practitioners realized that before they could collect butterflies they had first to fashion a proper net and devise a scheme for ordering the specimens to be caught. At the heart, then, of what we mean today by the science of politics stands political theory, understood as the self-conscious construction of conceptual systems for ordering reality and of hypotheses to explain the interconnections of the parts of these systems. Beside the scientist as survey researcher and statistician stands the scientist as theorist, as author of approaches, frameworks, and models.

Two contrasting social metaphysics are discussed: the naturalistic and the historical. The naturalistic metaphysics emphasizes general conditions, transhistorical explanations, laws in nature, reductive explanations, positivism, cumulative, and value-free knowledge, whereas the historical emphasizes specificity, historical conditions, man-made laws, descriptive explanation, inference, holism, and value-affected knowledge. An analysis of social psychology and sociology journals suggests that social psychology as a discipline is more naturalistic than historical in its orientation. Social psychology studies tend to be experimental, using students as subjects, small samples, and inferential statistics, and are more discipline-bound in referencing, whereas sociology studies are more descriptive, using structural categories of population as subjects, larger samples, and descriptive statistics, and are more related to other social sciences in terms of referencing. Implications of these results for social psychology are discussed.

Since 1952 the elaboration of Egyptian ideology has constituted a source of conflict between the regime and the left/right opposition. In trying to capture the ideological center, the regime has inevitably drawn itself into the maelstrom of public contention characterized by mass conformity, intimidation, purges, arrests, show trials and incarceration of all who fundamentally question the principles of the leadership. Democratic cooperative socialism ('Arab socialism') is the official ideology, and a spate of books and articles have been published on its significance for Egyptian politics. Despite all these efforts, confusion still tends to reign over this concept, both among Egyptians themselves, and outsiders studying it.

This paper re-examines the place of the ancestors in post-modern Africa societies. It critically analyses the ontological status of the 'living-dead' in pre-colonial Africa society. This is predicated on the incursions/advent of proselytizing religions, nay Christianity and Islam and the force and pace of globalization. It is the contention of this paper that since these religions cum globalization have a lot of converts in Africa, little or no regard is now been paid to the ancestors. This is because most of the converts prefer their new relationships (religion and globalization) instead of venerating their departed, which they now see as belittling and fetish. On the other hand, the civilizing tendencies of Asia and the West, particularly the globalizing forces, like the media and ICT, fostered this high disregard for the ancestors. This paper concludes that since the living don't even reflect the moral sanctity Africa was once known for, as a result of avarice, consumerism, materialism plus the alluring strings of globalization, the so-called 'moral paragon' should be allowed to really rest in peace.Key words: African religion, ancestors, worship, globalization, post-colonial, morality.