Attempting to present a more cognitive discussion than the previous post will be difficult, I suppose, but nevertheless... to understand Aristotle's intent in his The Politics it's helpful to read your excerpted quote in context: "... If the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature... Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal..." As you're probably aware, Aristotle believed that to understand nearly anything, his method was to compare the undeveloped to the full-blown, so to speak. That's self-evident in his writing in this case. Man cannot function as Aristotle believed he could or should unless involved in politcal exchange. As you've surmised, the difference between politcal and social is a matter of semantics and are interchangeable as applies to the process of discourse... humans are in need of other humans...