Artificial Science: A Simulation to Study the Social Processes of Science

Abstract

Science is important, not only in the knowledge it gives us, but also as an example of effective distributed problem solving that results in complex and compound solutions. This chapter presents a model of some of the social interactions in science, namely those between the body of published knowledge and the scientists’ individual knowledge. The structure of knowledge is modelled by a formal Hilbert system for a classical propositional logic. Individuals have limited selections of the total knowledge available which they use to derive new knowledge, which they may submit to the central journal to be published. This model shows how difficult it is to achieve the accumulation of knowledge as in science and also that publishing more does not necessarily lead to more important knowledge being discovered.