Abstract

This paper uses a dataset generated from keyword tagging works of literature and contemporary sources to scope the potential of a common definition and understanding of friendship. About 9000 keyword tags on about 300 keywords are used to extract friendship definitions from authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, C.S. Lewis, Alberoni, Nehamas, Greif, Degges-White, Hall, Shumway, Millington and others. On the compiled dataset MDS and correlational analysis is used to validate intuitive groupings and relatedness of friendship concepts. Six key dimensions of friendship are deduced with 55 subtraits. As an application a relative importance of friendship traits in old age is deduced. The paper is still work in progress but now at a stage soliciit discussion and comments.