An Epistemological Gap in Simulation Technologies and the Science of Society

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.