Science in the Age of Computer Simulation - Hardcover

Winsberg, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226902021 ISBN 13: 9780226902029

Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Computer simulation was first pioneered as a scientific tool in meteorology and nuclear physics in the period following World War II, but it has grown rapidly to become indispensible in a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including astrophysics, high-energy physics, climate science, engineering, ecology, and economics. Digital computer simulation helps study phenomena of great complexity, but how much do we know about the limits and possibilities of this new scientific practice? How do simulations compare to traditional experiments? And are they reliable? Eric Winsberg seeks to answer these questions in Science in the Age of Computer Simulation.

Scrutinizing these issue with a philosophical lens, Winsberg explores the impact of simulation on such issues as the nature of scientific evidence; the role of values in science; the nature and role of fictions in science; and the relationship between simulation and experiment, theories and data, and theories at different levels of description. Science in the Age of Computer Simulation will transform many of the core issues in philosophy of science, as well as our basic understanding of the role of the digital computer in the sciences.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eric Winsberg is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida.

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Science in the Age of Computer Simulation

By ERIC B. WINSBERG

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2010 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-90202-9

Contents

Acknowledgments....................................................ix1 Introduction.....................................................12 Sanctioning Models: Theories and Their Scope.....................73 Methodology for a Virtual World..................................294 A Tale of Two Methods............................................495 When Theories Shake Hands........................................726 Models of Climate: Values and Uncertainties......................937 Reliability without Truth........................................1208 Conclusion.......................................................135References.........................................................139Index..............................................................147

Chapter One

Introduction

Major developments in the history of the philosophy of science have always been driven by major developments in the sciences. The most famous examples, of course, are the revolutionary changes in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century that inspired the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. But there are many others. Kant's conception of synthetic a priori knowledge was originally intended to address the new mechanics of Newton. The rise of non-Euclidean geometries in the nineteenth century led to Helmholtz's revised formulation of transcendentalism, as well as, more famously, to Poincar's defense of conventionalism. The rise of atomic theory in the nineteenth century and the ensuing skepticism about the genuine existence of atoms, to raise one final example, played a large role in igniting and fueling debates about scientific realism that continue to rage today.

Over the last fifty years, however, there has been a revolutionary development affecting almost all of the sciences that, at least until very recently, has been largely ignored by philosophers of science. The development I am speaking of is the astonishing growth, in almost all of the sciences, of the use of the digital computer to study phenomena of great complexity-the rise of computer simulations. More and more scientific "experiments" are, to use the vernacular of the day, being carried out "in silico."

It is certainly true that, historically, most of the famous scientific developments that have had an impact on the philosophy of science have involved revolutionary changes at the level of fundamental theory. It is also true that the use of computer simulation to study complex phenomena usually occurs against a backdrop of well-established basic theory, rather than in the process of altering, let alone revolutionizing, such theory. But surely there is no reason to think that it is only changes in basic theory that should be of interest to philosophers. Surely there is no reason to think that new experimental methods, new research technologies, or innovative ways of solving new sets of problems within existing theory could not have a similar impact on philosophy. It is not altogether unlikely that some of the major accomplishments in the physical sciences to come in the near future will have as much to do with modeling complex phenomena within existing theories as with developing novel fundamental theories.

That, in a nutshell, is the basic sentiment that motivates this book: that the last part of the twentieth century has been, and the twenty-first century is likely to continue to be, the age of computer simulation. This has been an era in which, at least in the physical sciences, and to a large degree elsewhere, major developments in fundamental theory have been slow to come, but there has been an avalanche of novel applications of existing theory-an avalanche aided in no small part by our increasing ability to use the digital computer to build tractable models of greater and greater complexity, using the same available theoretical resources. The book is motivated as well by the conviction that the philosophy of science should continue, as it always has in the past, to respond to the character of the science of its own era. This book, therefore, is about computer simulation and the philosophy of science; and it is as much about what philosophers of science should learn in the age of simulation as it is about what philosophy can contribute to our understanding of how the digital computer is transforming science.

Science and Its Applications

General philosophy of science concerns itself with a diverse set of issues: the nature of scientific evidence, the nature and scope of scientific theories; the relations between theories at different levels of description; the relationship between theories on the one hand and local descriptions of phenomena on the other; the role that various kinds of models play in mediating those relationships; the nature of scientific explanation; and the issue of scientific realism, just to name a few. Our understanding of these topics, I will argue in this book, could greatly profit from a close look at examples of scientific practice where computer simulation plays a prominent role. There are also new topics that can arise for the philosophy of science, topics that have specifically to do with simulation but are of a distinctly philosophical character. I will tackle some of these in this book: What is the relationship between computer simulation, or simulation generally, and experiment? Under what conditions should we expect a computer simulation to be reliable? How can we evaluate a simulation model when the predictions made by such a model are precisely about those phenomena for which data are sparse? What role do deliberately false assumptions play in the construction of simulation models?

Let us begin with one of the oldest topics in the philosophy of science-the nature of scientific evidence. Computer simulations are involved in the creation and justification of scientific knowledge claims, and the problem of the nature of scientific evidence in the philosophy of science is precisely the concern with saying when we do, or don't, have evidence that such claims to knowledge are justified. But simulations more often involve the application rather than the testing of scientific theories. And so the epistemology of simulation is a topic that is quite unfamiliar to most philosophy of science, which has traditionally concerned itself with the justification of theories, not with their application. An appropriately subtle understanding of the epistemology of simulation requires that we rethink the relationship between theories and local descriptions of phenomena.

The rethinking required dovetails nicely, moreover, with recent debates in the philosophy of science about the scope of theories. According to one side in this debate, laws and theories in science are tightly restricted with respect to the features of the world that fall under their domain. The other side maintains that fundamental theories by their nature have universal domains. Few of the simulations considered in this book have much to do with fundamental theory, and so that precise debate will not concern us directly. But there is a related question that the epistemology of simulation must confront: Does the principled scope of every theory extend as far as all of its less-than-principled applications? More concretely, when simulationists use a particular theory to guide the construction of their simulations, is it necessarily the case that their results are,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226902021
• ISBN 13: 9780226902029
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 168
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: The University of Chicago Press; https://press.uchicago.edu/index.html; ; 5801 S. Ellis Avenue; Chicago; IL; 60637; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar