[…] According to Gray, we are seeing the evolution of two branches in every discipline: a computational branch and a data-processing branch. For example, in ecology there is now “both computational ecology, which is to do with simulating ecologies, and eco-informatics, which is to do with collecting and analyzing ecological information” (xix). How will the social sciences be affected by these developments? This chapter aims to contribute to a better understanding of the implications of data-intensive and computational research methodologies for the social sciences by focusing on two social science fields: sociology and economics. We address the implications of this debate for sociology and economics by uncovering what is at stake here. Although different kinds of “new data” are collected by both disciplines (transactional versus brain data), they serve as good examples to demonstrate how disciplines are responding to the availability of new data sources”
(from “SLOPPY DATA FLOODS OR PRECISE SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODOLOGIES? DILEMMAS IN THE TRANSITION TO DATA-INTENSIVE RESEARCH IN SOCIOLOGY AND ECONOMICS”,
in Virtual Knoowledge, The MIT Press, 2013)
cosimoaccoto.com 