Growing artificial societies [electronic resource]: social science from the bottom up

Joshua M. Epstein

Brookings Institution Press, 1996 - Social Science - 208 pages

""Growing Artificial Societies" is a milestone in social science research. It vividly demonstrates the potential of agent-based computer simulation to break disciplinary boundaries. It does this by analyzing in a unified framework the dynamic interactions of such diverse activities as trade, combat, mating, culture, and disease. It is an impressive achievement."
-- Robert Axelrod, University of Michigan How do social structures and group behaviors arise from the interaction of individuals? "Growing Artificial Societies" approaches this question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Fundamental collective behaviors such as group formation, cultural transmission, combat, and trade are seen to "emerge" from the interaction of individual agents following a few simple rules.

In their program, named Sugarscape, Epstein and Axtell begin the development of a "bottom up" social science that is capturing the attention of researchers and commentators alike.

The study is part of the 2050 Project, a joint venture of the Santa Fe Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution. The project is an international effort to identify conditions for a sustainable global system in the next century and to design policies to help achieve such a system.

"Growing Artificial Societies" is also available on CD-ROM, which includes about 50 animations that develop the scenarios described in the text.

"Copublished with the Brookings Institution"

Contents

• Life and Death on the Sugarscape: 21
• The Agents: 23
• Artificial Society on the Sugarscape: 26
• Wealth and Its Distribution in the Agent Population: 32
• Social Networks of Neighbors: 37
• Migration: 42
• Summary: 51
• Sex Culture and Conflict The Emergence of History: 54
• Sexual Reproduction: 55
• Cultural Processes: 71
• Combat: 82
• The ProtoHistory: 92
• Sugar and Spice Trade Comes to the Sugarscape: 94
• A Second Commodity: 96
• Trade Rules: 101
• Markets of Bilateral Traders: 108
• Emergent Economic Networks: 130
• Social Computation Emergent Computation: 133
• Summary and Conclusions: 136
• Disease Processes: 138
• Immune System Response: 140
• Disease Transmission: 145
• Digital Diseases on the Sugarscape: 147
• Disease Transmission Networks: 150
• Conclusions: 153
• Some Extensions of the Current Model: 162
• Other Artificial Societies: 165
• Formal Analysis of Artificial Societies: 176
• Generative Social Science: 177
• Looking Ahead: 178
• Software Engineering Aspects of Artificial Societies: 179
• Summary of Rule Notation: 182
• StateDependence of the Welfare Function: 186
• References: 190
• Index: 203

About the author

Joshua M. Epstein is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, a founding member of the Brookings-Johns Hopkins Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, and a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. He is the coauthor of "Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up" and the author of "Nonlinear Dynamics, Mathematical Biology, and Social Science.

Robert L. Axtell is a research associate in the Brookings Foreign Policy Studies program. They are both members of the Santa Fe Institute.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Growing artificial societies [electronic resource]: social science from the bottom up; A Bradford book; Complex adaptive systems
• Author: Joshua M. Epstein
• Contributors: Robert Axtell, 2050 Project
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0815715641, 9780815715641
• Length: 208 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Sociology / General