Affiliation:
1. Grenoble Graduate School of Business, France
Abstract
This chapter provides an introduction to the modern approach of artificiality and simulation in social sciences. It presents the relationship between complexity and artificiality, before introducing the field of artificial societies which greatly benefited from the fast increase of computer power, gifting social sciences with formalization and experimentation tools previously owned by the “hard” sciences alone. It shows that as “a new way of doing social sciences,” artificial societies should undoubtedly contribute to a renewed approach in the study of sociality and should play a significant part in the elaboration of original theories of social phenomena.
Reference60 articles.
1. Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
2. Axelrod, R. (1997). The complexity of cooperation: Agent-based models of competition and collaboration. London: University College London Press.
3. Axelrod, R. (2006). Advancing the art of simulation in the social sciences. In J.-P. Rennard (Ed.), Handbook of research on nature-inspired computing for economics and management. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference.
4. Axelrod, R., & Tesfatsion, L. (forthcoming). A guide for newcomers to agent-based modeling in the social sciences. In L. Tesfatsion & K. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of computational economics, vol. 2: Agent-based computational economics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
5. Axtell, R. L. (2000). Effect of interaction topology and activation regime in several multi-agent systems. Technical Report No. 00-07-039, Santa Fe Institute, USA.