There is a continuing concern about whether politics can be made a science, revived in this Journal by Ake [Claude Ake, ‘The Scientific Status of Political Science’, II (1972), 109–15], McLean and Postbrief [‘“The Scientific Status of Political Science” – Two Comments’, II (1972), by Iain McLean, 383–4, and Samuel Postbrief, 385–8]. The word in other languages does not appear to elicit the same arguments: in French, for example, the expression ‘science politique’ is far less problematical because the word ‘science’ lacks both the theoretical and emotive implications which belong to the English word ‘science’.