Ten years of Understanding Society

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Understanding Society. The blog now includes 1,176 posts on topics in the philosophy of social science, the heterogeneity of the social world, current thinking about social problems, and occasional contributions on how we can envision a better future. Thanks to all of the readers who have visited during the past twelve months!

The blog continues to serve as a simulating outlet for intellectual work for me. Each post is roughly a thousand words, and my aim is to develop one idea or address one problem in the post. I've never tried for consistency or thematic coherence over time; the blog is more of a research notebook for me, allowing me to capture ideas and topics as they come up. Since the beginning I've looked at it as a kind of "open source philosophy," allowing for the development of ideas and arguments in a piecemeal way. At the same time, it serves as a kind of seismograph for me, letting me recall the kind of topics that have come to the fore over time.

And, as I had hoped, the blog has created a platform for moving ideas from conception to academic publication for new ideas. My book New Directions in the Philosophy of Social Science appeared about a year ago, and it was wholly developed through the blog.

In the past year there have been a number of posts on familiar topics -- critical realism, social mechanisms, and social inequality, for example. These are enduring topics in my research and writing. But a few new topics have arisen as well. One is the question of the dynamics and extent of hate-driven political movements, such as the populist-nationalist extremism of the Trump campaign and presidency (link). Another is completely unrelated -- the fascinating history of fundamental physics during the early decades is the twentieth century, culminating in the development of the atomic bomb (link). And a third is an emerging area of interest for me -- the nature and causes of organizational dysfunction in contemporary institutions (link). I've even had occasion to reflect on cephalopod intelligence (link).

The blog continues to enjoy increasing numbers of visitors. Google recorded over 140,000 page views on the blog in the past month, resulting in over 1.5 million page views over the past year. Part of that traffic comes from followers on Twitter (2,106), Facebook (7,786), Google+ (1,621), and Flipboard, and a great number of the visits are directed by Google searches on relevant topics.

So thank you, readers and visitors, and I hope you will keep reading and commenting!