Models and Simulations

In this chapter we present some of the central philosophical issues emerging from the increasingly expansive and sophisticated roles computational modeling is playing in the natural and social sciences. Many of these issues concern the adequacy of more traditional philosophical descriptions of scientific practice and accounts of justification for handling computational science, particularly the role of theory in the generation and justification of physical models. However, certain novel issues are also becoming increasingly prominent as a result of the spread of computational approaches, such as nontheory-driven simulations , computational methods of inference, and the important, but often ignored, role of cognitive processes in computational model building.