Qualitative Models in Computational Simulative Sciences: Representation, Confirmation, Experimentation

Abstract

The Epistemology Of Computer Simulation (EOCS) has developed as an epistemological and methodological analysis of simulative sciences using quantitative computational models to represent and predict empirical phenomena of interest. In this paper, Executable Cell Biology (ECB) and Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) are examined to show how one may take advantage of qualitative computational models to evaluate reachability properties of reactive systems. In contrast to the thesis, advanced by EOCS, that computational models are not adequate representations of the simulated empirical systems, it is shown how the representational adequacy of qualitative models is essential to evaluate reachability properties. Justification theory, if not playing an essential role in EOCS, is exhibited to be involved in the process of advancing and corroborating model-based hypotheses about empirical systems in ECB and ABM. Finally, the practice of evaluating model-based hypothesis by testing the simulated systems is shown to constitute an argument in favour of the thesis that computer simulations in ECB and ABM can be put on a par with scientific experiments.