International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

tion, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life) enhanced 
the strict separation of natural science and religion. At the core of Darwin’s 
theory was the principle of evolution, the idea that the universe and life de-
velop incrementally by adapting to the demands of their surroundings. The 
structure and development of nature are not results of a divine plan, but rather 
consequences of an existential fight to survive. In that world, “survival of the 

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fittest” determines outcomes; the characteristics that helped animals to be 
“fit” – to reproduce as much as possible – became dominant in a population. 
The human mind suddenly was no longer of divine construction but rather a 
biological instrument resulting from evolution. However, it should be noted 
that Darwin also introduced “accident” to the natural sciences: in his work, 
accident was a mechanism of mutation – the spontaneous, inadvertent change 
of genotype that played such a crucial role in evolution. Pure accident in the 
form of mutation had now become part of a scientific theory. This develop-
ment is significant because it violates the argument of strong causality: if ac-
cident has such an important role in evolution, then determining a prognosis 
is difficult if not almost impossible. This conclusion holds true not only for 
biology; in fact, we will come back to this issue in the final section of this 
unit when learning about “new physics”. 
The 19
th
century was therefore particularly important for the continued 
development of the new scientific world view. With the industrial revolution 
in England and particularly after the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolu-
tion, the significance of the natural sciences and technology was rising tre-
mendously in Europe. In philosophy of science, positivism became the domi-
nant scientific perspective; positivism as a philosophy of science in fact em-
bodies the close linkage between philosophy and the idea of natural (empiri-
cal) science as described above. Al-Jabris’ argument of science as the “incen-
tive element” for the advancement of philosophy (Al-Jabri 2011: 421) again 
turns out to be plausible. Natural science based on physics and mathematics 
became the driving force of philosophy of science and shaped the idea of phi-
losophy itself. This new understanding of science is a philosophy of the world 
view of mechanics/physics, and holds philosophy to be a natural/empirical 
science.
This mutual dependency of philosophy and science has far reaching im-
plications, as scientific world views are not only reflected in the conduct of 
the sciences, but as broader orders of thought that pervade society. They ap-
pear in economics, political thought, sociology, linguistics, arts, literature, 
culture, etc.
Therefore, in regard to the discipline of IR, it will be easy to see how the 
Cartesian-Newtonian world view is embodied in most of our theoretical de-
scriptions and explanations of the rise of the European state and the state sys-
tem. This world view also appears in our theories on inter-state relations, lat-
er inter-national relations. Inter-state theory as formulated by Hobbes, Locke 
and Kant all fundamentally reflect the idea of science as developed at their 
time – the 17
th
and 18
th
century (described above). So, in fact, does the huge 
body of IR theory that draws on the understanding that IR’s core subject is 

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the modern state and the modern states system. In a nutshell: a co-evolution 
has taken place with regard to the processes of the rise of the modern state 
and state system (the core subject of the discipline), of inter-state theory as a 
systematic reflection on the state and state system, and of the rise of the Car-
tesian-Newtonian scientific world view being incorporated in the application 
of “science” to the study of international relations. I believe that being aware 
of this interconnectedness will help us to better understand the complex 
world of IR theory, an argument which we will return to again at a later stage 
of this book. At that point, we will take a closer look at the ways a selected 
range of IR theories theoretically and conceptually perceives the state, the state 
system, politics, international politics, their actors and structures (in Part 2).