Social Analytics

Analytics is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Especially valuable in areas rich with recorded information, analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming and operations research to quantify performance.

Living organisms including humans are social when they live collectively in interacting populations, whether they are aware of it, and whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

Social analytics is a philosophical perspective developed since the early 1980s by the Danish idea historian and philosopher Lars-Henrik Schmidt. The theoretical object of the perspective is socius, a kind of "commonness" that is neither a universal account nor a communality shared by every member of a body. Thus, Social Analytics differs from traditional philosophy as well as sociology. It might be said that the perspective attempts to articulate the contentions between philosophy and sociology. The practise of Social Analytics is to report on tendencies of the times. It does not aim to make a diagnosis of the times that can be agreed upon by everyone or anybody but a report that no one wants to protest about.