Science in the age of computer simulation

Computer simulation was pioneered as a scientific tool in meteorology and nuclear physics in the period directly following World War II, and since then has become indispensable in a growing number of disciplines. The list of sciences that make extensive use of computer simulation has grown to include astrophysics, particle physics, materials science, engineering, fluid mechanics, climate science, evolutionary biology, ecology, economics, decision theory, medicine, sociology, epidemiology, and many others. There are even a few disciplines, such as chaos theory and complexity theory, whose very existence has emerged alongside the development of the computational models they study. In Others word, Computer simulations have become a major source of information all over the scientific landscape, often used instead of experimentation to investigate phenomena. Until recently, however, they have received very little attention from philosophers of science.

After a slow start, philosophers of science have begun to devote more attention to the role of computer simulation in science. Several areas of philosophical interest in computer simulation have emerged: What is the structure of the epistemology of computer simulation? What is the relationship between computer simulation and experiment? Does computer simulation raise issues for the philosophy of science that are not fully covered by recent work on models more generally?