The pervasive use of computer simulations in the sciences brings novel epistemological issues discussed in the philosophy of science literature since about a decade. Evolutionary biology strongly relies on such simulations, and in relation to it there exists a research program (Artificial Life) that mainly studies simulations themselves. This paper addresses the specificity of computer simulations in evolutionary biology, in the context (described in Sect. 1) of a set of questions about their scope as explanations, the nature of validation processes (...) and the relation between simulations and true experiments or mathematical models. After making distinctions, especially between a weak use where simulations test hypotheses about the world, and a strong use where they allow one to explore sets of evolutionary dynamics not necessarily extant in our world, I argue in Sect. 2 that (weak) simulations are likely to represent in virtue of the fact that they instantiate specific features of causal processes that may be isomorphic to features of some causal processes in the world, though the latter are always intertwined with a myriad of different processes and hence unlikely to be directly manipulated and studied. I therefore argue that these simulations are merely able to provide candidate explanations for real patterns. Section 3 ends up by placing strong and weak simulations in Levins’ triangle, that conceives of simulations as devices trying to fulfil one or two among three incompatible epistemic values (precision, realism, genericity). (shrink)

Even though the philosophy of simulation is intended as a comprehensive reflection about the practice of computer simulation in contemporary science, its output has been disproportionately shaped by research on equation-based simulation in the physical and climate sciences. Hence, the particularities of alternative practices of computer simulation in other scientific domains are not sufficiently accounted for in the current philosophy of simulation literature. This article centres on agent-based social simulation, a relatively established type of simulation in the social sciences, to (...) exemplify this claim. The analysis advanced has a twofold goal. First, it shows that the philosophy of agent-based social simulation, mostly developed by practitioners themselves, is, on one hand, heavily influenced by the methodological features of agent-based modelling and by the loose and fragmented character of social theory and, on the other hand, distinctively shaped by contrasting views of what it implies to do social research with virtual or artificial societies. Second, it suggests ways in which cross-fertilisation could enrich the philosophical understanding of computer simulation both in agent-based social simulation and in the philosophy of simulation. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that simulation can serve as epistemic substitute for experimentation. Such a claim might be suggested by the fast-spreading use of computer simulation to investigate phenomena not accessible to experimentation. But what does that mean? The paper starts with a clarification of the terms of the issue and then focuses on two powerful arguments for the view that simulation and experimentation are ‘epistemically on a par’. One is based on the claim that, in experimentation, no less than (...) in simulation, it is not the system under study that is manipulated but a system that ‘stands-in’ for it. The other one highlights the pervasive use of models in experimentation. It will be argued that these arguments, as compelling as they might seem, are each based on a mistaken interpretation of experimentation and that, far from simulation and experimentation being epistemically on a par, they do not have the same epistemic function, do not produce the same kind of epistemic results. (shrink)