Methodology and Social Epistemology in the Practice of Agent-Based Social Simulation, Part II

This project is framed within the wider agenda of the Innovation Centre, and seeks to contribute to it from a methodological point of view. The Centre has adopted a theoretical-methodological framework under which innovation is understood as a complex phenomenon. Hence, its practices have been reoriented towards developing an account that tackles innovation problems at the organisational level with tools and theories associated with complexity, emergence theory and generative social science. The aims, mission and vision of the Innovation Centre now revolve around producing research and offering consultancy and teaching services using non-conventional computational tools and methods.

The project, specifically, focuses on the development of sound methodological foundations for a method of particular interest to the Innovation Centre: agent-based modelling. The attractiveness of this method for the study of innovation derives from the fact that it allows to diachronically approach phenomena in which interaction among subcomponents is the key mechanism of change. In spite of its potential relevance to the practices of the Innovation Centre, agent-based modelling is yet to become mainstream in social science and its methodology is still underdeveloped. Seeking to provide foundations for a more robust use of agent-based modelling in the analysis of innovation, the project centres, first, on the methodological analysis of this distinctive form of computational simulation and, second, on the study of the social epistemology of computational social science, the disciplinary area articulated around the use of agent-based modelling in social science.