An Epistemological Gap in Simulation Technologies and the Science of Society

View Sample PDF

Author(s): Martin Neumann (University of Bayreuth, Germany)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 22
Source title: Handbook of Research on Culturally-Aware Information Technology: Perspectives and Models
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Emmanuel G. Blanchard (McGill University, Canada)and Danièle Allard (Sherbrooke University, Canada)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-883-8.ch006

Keywords: Human Aspects of Technology / Information Science Reference / Social Sciences & Humanities

Purchase

View An Epistemological Gap in Simulation Technologies and the Science of Society on the publisher's website for pricing and purchasing information.

Abstract

This chapter addresses methodological issues in relation to simulation technologies, using the example of archaeological modeling. While the top-down architecture of system dynamics became popular in the 1970s, the bottom-up approach of agent-based modeling actually predominates in social simulation. This paper demonstrates that the gap in sociological theory between interactionalist and structuralist theories can be discerned in the methodological framework. The theoretical implications associated with the choice of a simulation methodology are examined by contrasting agent-based and equation-based models in detail. This example makes evident how intimately issues of methodology are interwoven with epistemological and ontological questions. However, agent-based modeling aims precisely to overcome this dichotomy with the notion of emergence. The chapter therefore concludes with an overview of requirements for a technology of emergence.

The IRMA Community

Research IRM

An Epistemological Gap in Simulation Technologies and the Science of Society

Purchase

Abstract

Related Content

IRMA Sponsors