Computer Simulation in the Physical Sciences

Abstract

The central claim of this paper is that computer simulation provides (though not exclusively) a qualitatively new and different methodology for the physical sciences, and that this methodology lies somewhere intermediate between traditional theoretical physical science and its empirical methods of experimentation and observation. In many cases it involves a new syntax which gradually replaces the old, and it involves theoretical model experimentation in a qualitatively new and interesting way. Scientific activity has thus reached a new milestone somewhat comparable to the milestones that started the empirical approach (Galileo) and the deterministic mathematical approach to dynamics (the old syntax of Newton and Laplace). Computer simulation is consequently of considerable philosophical interest. In view of further technical developments in the near future, computer experts suggest that we are at present only at the very beginning of this new era.