Name: Salvador Lyndon P.

Rempillo
Course: MGT 221A
Subject: BC GS FOUNDATION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Date: July 10. 2021
Summer Term 2021

Reaction Paper
Topic: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Public administration has been called many things; a subset of political science or at
least its off spring, a process of government that has been formalized into a discipline, and even
a subject matter in search of a discipline. Public administration is a process and as such has
been around as long as governments have existed. As a discipline, it is primarily an American
idea that grew out of the late nineteenth" century movement for government reform, the
scientific management theories of Frederick Taylor. Its roots are deeply rooted with the
implementation of public policy.

Many thinkers have argued that Public Administration was science. The term Science is
generally used in two senses-wide and narrow. In the former sense it means systematized
knowledge or a body of knowledge derived from experience or observation. In the latter sense
it is that body of knowledge, which formulates accurate general principles on the basis of which
results can be largely predicted. The main features of Science are thus exactness, validity and
predictability. Only the physical science like physics, chemistry, etc are known to possess these
features of science. In this sense, Public Administration or for that matter any social science
cannot be regarded as sciences. In its wider sense the term science may be defined as a
systematized body of knowledge derived from experience and observation. In this sense,
economics, political science, public administration and other social sciences are called sciences.

There is also a third view that Public Administration is both a Science and an Art.
According to this point of view due to non-applicability of the principles of Science like
exactness, universality and predictability it cannot be called a Science but since it has a fairly
advanced body of scientific knowledge and scientific measures are applied to it, it can with
advanced research and knowledge develop into a Science of administration in future. As it deals
with the human element and deals with public in a number of ways it is considered as an Art.