Difference Between Politics And Political Science

The term
"political science" derives from the Greek word "polis" (plural:
"poleis") which means "city state". In Greek philosophy, human affairs and
the science of understanding them are divided into three categories, ethics, which studies the
human as an individual, economics, which studies the individual household (from
"oikos" or household, only later taking on the sense of finance), and politics, which
approaches humans as they interact in larger social groups. 

The main
distinction between the terms "politics" and "political science" is that the
former refers to the actual process of how humans interact in groups and the latter the
scientific study of the former. Aristotle, who is the origin of much of our terminology in this
matter, defines humans as "political animals" meaning that we tend to form large
social groupings but refers to the science of studying these groupings as
"politikª epistªmª" (political science). 

Politics constitute an
activity, e.g. "John's response to Mary's report was based as much on office politics as on
close analysis", but political science is an abstract system of knowledge, e.g.
"Political scientists are increasingly using 'big data' to correlate voting and shopping
patterns."