Discussions of Max Weber's essay on “The `Objectivity' of Knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy” and Michael Oakeshott's reflections “On the Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct” have seldom included a detailed textual analysis of the arguments. Such an analysis is important, because these essays not only thoroughly addressed the issue of the nature of social scientific inquiry but uniquely confronted and illuminated two fundamental and endemic paradoxes which have been particularly prominent at crucial junctures in conversations about the identity and role of fields such as political science. These paradoxes, however, arise from the very nature of metapractices and, specifically, from the complex cognitive and practical relationships among philosophy, social science, and practices such as politics.
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