Re: [SwarmFest2004] SwarmFest2004 - Presentation Abstract

[Rick Riolo]

hi greg,
ok, we have your abstract, thanks,
 - r

Rick Riolo                           address@hidden
Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS)
4477 Randall Lab
University of Michigan         Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
Phone: 734 763 3323                  Fax: 734 763 9267
http://cscs.umich.edu/~rlr

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Greg Madey wrote:

> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 17:40:23 -0500
> From: Greg Madey <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Cc: Greg Madey <address@hidden>
> Subject: [SwarmFest2004] SwarmFest2004 - Presentation Abstract
>
> The Computer Experiment in Computational Social Science
>
> The year 2003 was the 50th anniversary of the invention of the
> "computer experiment" by Fermi, Pasta and Ulam. The computer experiment
> was offered as the third way of doing science at the time. In Kuhn's
> normal science, the scientific method suggests the generation of new
> knowledge by making observations of a phenomenon, identifying curious
> aspects of the phenomenon, generating a falsifiable hypothesis to
> explain the phenomenon, and designing an expermiment to disprove the
> hyposthesis (Popper 1982). Should the experiment fail (to disprove the
> hypothesis) it is accepted as an explanatory model until eventually
> replaced by something better. Fermi et al proposed the use of the
> computer experiment for inquiry into the physical sciences where the
> phenomenon cannot or is not easily observed. Over the last decade
> various social science disciplines, including political science,
> anthropology, sociology, and organizational science began to embrace
> simulation as one method of inquiry in what is sometimes called
> computation social science. Recently, Axelrod (1997), McKelvey (1999),
> Goldspink (2002), Kluver et al (2003) and many others have explored the
> role of computer simulation as a source of new knowledge in the social
> sciences. We integrate their analysis and present another view of
> computer simulation as part of the classical scientific method applied
> to the investigation of social systems. The hypothesis of the classical
> scienfic method becomes the conceptual model of the social scientists,
> which in turn is implemented in a computer simulation. Computer
> experiments are conducted using those computer simulations.
>
> Greg Madey
> Computer Science & Engineering
> University of Notre Dame
> address@hidden
>
>