opositions against reality. Thus, Weber's perspective, Portis contends, is that politics are autonomous from science both in principle and in practice. Portis is partly right. Yet he is also partly wrong. He accurately portrays Weber's first-level view that denies the existence of either positive or natural law, affirming the fact-value dichotomy: "The categories through which social phenomena are perceived must be radically subjective, derived from priorities that the investigator brings to work rather than universal laws discovered through systematic observation." 30 Portis, however, soon goes astray -- or just does not go far enough -- in characterizing Weber's view of the fact-value dichotomy: "Because these categories are antecedent to social scientific analysis, social problems cannot be scientifically resolved." 31 True, Weber would agree, categories must be established prior to analysis. Once established, these categories also entail ends, and it is by working objectively toward those ends that allows the social scientist to resolve a given social problem scientifically. Moreover, if one accepts Weber's view that objectivity can be applied to social and economic problems only after a distinct value orientation has been established, it follows that political action does not corrupt a social scientist's objectivity as long as the scientist's perspective or values are explicitly acknowledged. The crucial element that Portis overlooks is that by choosing categories, by establishing a value prior to analysis, as the social scientist must, he is necessarily making decisions that are inherently political in nature. Given this, the converse of Portis' conclusion in fact holds: That a social scientist cannot engage in objective analysis without taking overt political action, because the choice of values is itself a political act. From this it follows that science and politics are, for Weber, not mutually exclusive; rather, they are mutua...
