A Study of Policy Making.

Editor's Note: As a new, emerging branch of learning, the science of policy making is arousing the close attention of policymakers at various levels as well as theoretical workers. All kinds of complicated and arduous new problems posed by socialist modernization and the increasing complexity of the structure and laws of social activities make a scientific approach to policy making and its modernization an extremely urgent task. Herein lies the necessity and urgency of a philosophical analysis of the question of policy making. A series of problems have arisen, such as scientific policy making and objective laws (including the laws of nature, society, and thought), scientific policy making and practice and recognition, scientific policy making and scientific prediction, scientific method and standard of value in scientific policy making, all of which must be answered from the high plane of philosophy. Meanwhile, the modern science of policy making is showing the trend of comprehensive use of all kinds of new achievements and new methods in science and technology. Such comprehensive application has opened up broad fields for applying Marxist world outlook and methodology in philosophy to solve all kinds of complicated problems. To seek effective ways of applying philosophy to the modernization drive, paying close attention to the development of new disciplines such as the science of policy making may be helpful in finding out the "joining points" between philosophy and various branches of concrete science, between philosophy and reality, between applied research and basic theory research in philosophy and opening up a new situation in the study of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]