These concepts are fundamental to current research based on the computational simulation of societies and social phenomena:

• Simulation: There is growing interest in using computer simulation to explore issues in the social sciences. This site aims to provide resources for researchers in this emerging field. Simulation is a novel research method in most parts of the social sciences, including sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, geography, archaeology and linguistics. It can also be the inspiration for new, process-oriented theories of society.

• Experiments: Experiments are not possible in most areas of social science. But with computer simulation, it becomes possible to build artificial societies of computational agents and carry out experiments under laboratory conditions, trying out different configurations and observing the consequences.

  Many computer games are, in effect, artificial societies, although they are of course constructed for entertainment rather than for analytical understanding. Some artificial life simulations are also mainly of interest because they are artificial societies.

• Emergence: One of the most important, but difficult problems in social science is to clarify the relationship between large-scale, societal (or 'macro') phenomena and small-scale features observable at the level of the individual.

  Much recent work on social simulation has been concerned with this issue and especially the 'emergence' of macro properties from micro-level interactions.

A more detailed exploration of these points can be found in Simulation: a emergent perspective, a transcript of a lecture by Nigel Gilbert. Also see the bibliography.

http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/research/simsoc/intro.html