Analyzing the Tragic Aspect of Computational Social Sciences Based on Bourdieu's Theory

Computational social science is an emerging branch of social science that has emerged at the intersection with computer science and in line with the dominance of mathematical logic in social sciences within the digital age. Contemporary philosophy of social sciences has fundamentally questioned its possibilities and limitations. Many scholars, in contrast to the enthusiasm that computational social sciences have generated for solving complex social equations, argue that culture cannot be explained through algorithmic systems, and this constitutes a form of reductionism. Pierre Bourdieu is among the contemporary sociologists whose ideas have received increasing attention in recent years. He adopts a critical approach to sociology. While some researchers have attempted to link his conceptual framework to computational social sciences and the digital realm more broadly, others have emphasized a cultural reading of his theory. This article seeks to offer a new reading of these two approaches to Bourdieu's theory through the mediating concept of Nietzschean tragedy—a reading that synthesizes both interpretations and thereby proposes a new possibility for computational social sciences. By employing the concept of tragedy in Nietzsche's thought, the present study offers a novel interpretation of these two approaches that, while reconciling them, opens up fresh theoretical possibilities for computational social sciences. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical, based on library research, and its main contribution lies in formulating a critical-interpretive framework to critique the technocratic optimism prevailing in computational social sciences and to open new horizons for future empirical research grounded in Bourdieu's theory.