Overview

"How do social structures and group behaviours arise from the interaction of individuals? ""Growing Artificial Societies"" approaches this question with computer simulation techniques. Fundamental collective behaviours 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 programme, named Sugarscape, Epstein and Axtell begin the development of a ""bottom up"" social science. 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."

Full Product Details

Author:   Joshua M. Epstein ,  Robert L. Axtell
Publisher:   Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint:   MIT Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.00cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 22.80cm
Weight:   0.304kg
ISBN:  

9780262550253

ISBN 10:   0262550253
Pages:   226
Publication Date:   01 October 1996
Recommended Age:   From 18
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Part 1 Introduction: ""artificial society"" models; life and death on the sugarscape; sex, culture and conflict - the emergence of history; sugar and spice - trade comes to the sugarscape; disease agents; a society is born; artificial societies versus traditional models; artificial societies versus ALife; toward generative social science - can you grow it?. Part 2 Life and death on the sugarscape: in the beginning ... there was sugar; the agents; artificial society on the sugarscape; wealth and its distribution in the agent population; social networks of neighbours; migration; summary. Part 3 Sex, culture and conflict - the emergence of history: sexual reproduction; cultural processes; combat; the proto-history. Part 4 Sugar and spice - trade comes to the sugarscape: spice - a second commodity; trade rules; markets of bilateral traders; emergent economic networks; social computation, emergent computation; summary and conclusions. Part 5 Disease processes: models of disease transmission and immune response; immune system response; disease transmission; digital diseases on the sugarscape; disease transmission networks. Part 6 Conclusions: summary; some extensions of the current model; other artificial societies; formal analysis of artificial societies; generative social science; looking ahead...; appendices."

Reviews

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

Author Information

Robert L. Axtell was formerly research associate in the Brookings Foreign Policy Studies program.

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