Digital (re)mediations and the disruptions of the contemporary social sciences
The unprecedented traceability of the social practices is reactivating the divisions that have divided the sciences since the 19th century. The abundance of data and the power of their processing seem to weaken sociology, while physics or computer science actively invest its field of predilection. Social sciences would no longer have the monopoly of the social, whose relations would not be so singular and could be the subject of treatments that have been experienced by the natural sciences. In order to better understand the issues related to the deployment of digital devices in all contemporary practices, we suggest distinguishing the evolution of social relations, the observation of these relations, the production of knowledge and, finally, the production of meaning, as many digital remediations. We would no longer be witnessing a crisis of empirical sociology, but the resurgence of the ideal of social physics, which would oppose the qualities of interpretation to the power of efficiency. Nevertheless, by omitting more than a century of social sciences, this project promoted by the computational social science perpetuates numerous misunderstandings, neglects the reflexivity, and rejects the proper of the human in favor of supposedly universal laws.