Emergent phenomena and computer worlds

Abstract

This paper will examine the way in which the ability to create surrogate versions of real complex systems inside our computing machines changes the way we do science. In particular, emphasis will be laid upon the idea that these so-called “artificial worlds” play the role of laboratories for complex systems, laboratories that are completely analogous to the more familiar laboratories that have been used by physicists, biologists and chemists for centuries to understand the workings of matter. But these are laboratories in which we explore the informational rather than the material structure of systems. And since the ability to do controlled, repeatable experiments is a necessary precondition to the creation of a scientific theory of anything, the argument will be made that for perhaps the first time in history, we are now in a position to realistically think about the creation of a theory of complex systems.