EPOS-Epistemological Perspectives on Simulation : An Introduction

There is strong evidence that computer simulation is increasingly recognized as an important analytical tool in many social sciences disciplines and fields. During the last ten years, a number of new journals, which are devoted to this field, have been founded and others have increased their influence (i.e., JASSS, CMOT, Social Science Computer Review, Autonomous Agent and Multi-Agent Systems, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Computational Economics, Computational Management Science). Special issues and extensive reviews of the literature have been published in influential and standard journals. At the same time, new international associations and societies were born, with an increasing number of members (i.e., ESSA in Europe, NAACSOS in North America, The Society for Computational Economics), many research centers and institutes have been successfully launched, many workshops, conferences and congresses are organized every year (with the first world congress on social simulation held in 2006 in Tokyo and the second one in Washington in 2008), and an open market of tools and simulation platforms (i.e., Swarm, Repast, Ascape, NetLogo), based on a vast community of developers and users, is steadily growing.