Social simulation, agents and artificial societies

Computer simulation in support of the social sciences is far from new. But, with one or two exceptions, notably certain types of economic modeling, it has never become a major weapon in the social scientists armoury. However, in the last few years developments in intelligent agents and multiple agent systems have sparked a new interest in computer simulation in disciplines such as economics, anthropology and sociology. The key new opportunity is that something corresponding to the cognitive processes of members of a society may now be made explicit (in agents) in models. This enables studies to be made of the relationship between agent-level and society-level phenomena in a way not previously possible. However, important and interesting methodological difficulties arise, and it is these difficulties that are the main focus of the paper.