Published 17 November 2010
The Conference on Epistemology of Modeling and Simulation was held on Pittsburgh on April 1-3, 2011. The Conference was supported by the University of Pittsburgh Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) National Center of Excellence, and focused on philosophical issues that arise within the practice and application of contemporary research using modeling and simulation. The goal of this event was to bring together sophisticated work in philosophy of science and on-going efforts in modeling in order to build more effective collaboration between philosophers of science and those who build and employ models in a range of disciplines and applications.
Topics included:
- The scientific status of computational techniques
- Does simulation require a new epistemology?
- The role of theory, experiment, model and simulation
- Varieties and purposes of scientific simulation
- Analytic modeling versus computer simulation
- Problems of juggling multiple and competing models
- How do models fail?
- Validation and verification of models and simulations
- Promises and pitfalls of large, detailed and realistic models