Academics say the darndest things….

16 June 2009, 0224 EDT

From a recent article on social-science methodology:

For example, gravity is a trivial necessary cause of revolution, because gravity is simply always present regardless of whether or not a revolution happens.

Clearly, not everyone in my field is a science-fiction fan.

nb: someone has suggested to me that the authors mean “revolution” as in “Venus revolves around the Sun.” But gravity is certainly not a non-trivial cause of such revolution; given the context of the article, I’m pretty sure the authors use the term in the “grab the pitchfork and storm the castle” sense….

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.