Book Review: Eric Winsberg: Science in the Age of Computer Simulation

Abstract

Before the advent of sufficiently powerful computing machinery, the practice of science took place on a bi-polar spectrum between rationalism and empirism, between theory and experiment. Theory commanded support from mathematics and ideal speculation; experiments commanded support from technical instruments and material skills. All the science-philosophical contributions and discourses prior to the actual availability of computers find their places somewhere on the line of that bi-polar spectrum – some of them more on the side of rationalism, others more on the side of empirism. After computers have equipped us with the new possibility of programming and executing computer simulations (or software simulations) as quasi-experiments “in silicio”, a new “dimension” has possibly been “added” to the hitherto bi-polar spectrum between rationalism and empirism.