The computational methods of artificial life were applied to the analysis of social systems, christened "the artificial society" by Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell. Eventually, the artificial society provided a new method for sociological analysis in the form of computational sociology. The principal problem is that of classical sociology, the issue of macro-micro linkage: as first articulated by French Sociologist Émile Durkheim, the question of how individuals within a social system influence and are influenced by the macrosocial level. | The computational methods of artificial life were applied to the analysis of social systems, christened "the artificial society" by Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell. Eventually, the artificial society provided a new method for sociological analysis in the form of computational sociology. The principal problem is that of classical sociology, the issue of macro-micro linkage: as first articulated by French Sociologist Émile Durkheim, the question of how individuals within a social system influence and are influenced by the macrosocial level. |