Thanks, Raoul, oh reliable 'philosophe'! I seem to be able to count on you for combinations of the thoughtful and unusual to rouse me from my torpor of non-participatory lurking...

As the others have already given better answers to Questions Two through Four, I choose the first:

Are politics a science or an art?

Isaac Asimov, through the fiction of his Foundation series, seemed to have thought that politics might someday become a science - in the sense that sufficiently rigorous mathematics aspplied to sufficient data would be able to predict the movements and results of mass behavior: a Newtonian determinism applied to mob psychology. On the other hand, those stories were written a few decades before mathematical chaos theory.

Politics is an Art - in the same manner as the fields of knowledge we now label 'science' were once also 'arts' - analogous to certain fields of knowledge and their application being termed 'professions' to be 'practiced': medicine, law, architecture and (not so long ago) engineering. It is a subtle bit of archaic semantics, perhaps. There is no denying that science, or the technological results of science, provide most of the tools used in those practices; similarly, statistical tools of data gathering and analysis are increasingly relied upon by practitioners of politics, especially those working at "macro" scales. What makes the professions Arts is that the application of the tools to a given problem is still a personal act of the individual practitioner: a judgement call.

Politics is an Art in this way also, more closely tied to the kind of art found in museums, concert halls, theaters and (occasionally) movie houses: Success or failure in the practice of politics relies exclusively upon persuasion. Although I believe Mary Anne had her tongue in her oft-cynical (for good reasons!) cheek, I also believe she would agree that the aesthetics of politics, like law, are found in the crafting and delivery of persuasive words. Whether stirring crowds of potential supporters to a cause or conducting a cloak-room deal, the beauty of politics is not in the product but the process. That is: beauty is not in whether you win or lose, but in how well you play.

And a reminder, for those believing Art as we commonly know it is the sole possessor, guardian, exemplar and interpreter of aesthetic: not for nothing are mathematical formulae and physical theories called "elegant".

Thanks again, Raoul!

Fox