Sociology and Social Theory in Agent Based Social Simulation: A Symposium
| R. Conte, B. Edmonds, S. Moss, K. Sawyer | 2001 | Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory | 7, 183–205 |
Abstract: A lengthy and intensive debate about the role of sociology in agent based social simulation dominated the email list simsoc@jiscmail.ac.uk during the autumn of 2000. The debate turned on the importance of models being devised to capture the properties of whole social systems and whether those properties should determine agent behaviour or, conversely, whether the properties of social systems should emerge from the behaviour and interaction of the agents and, if so, how that emergence should be represented. The positions of four of the main protagonists concerned specifically with the modelling issues are reprised and extended in this symposium.
Social analysis should start with the problem rather than the model, technique or theory.
Representational: descriptions of observed social systems, allow validation of the description.
Foundational: identify important and useful abstractions in the development of social theory.
Scot Moss:
- analyse the properties of social systems.
- the same modelling techniques that are intended to represent real social systems can also represent software systems.