Cover of Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason

Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason

In this groundbreaking new book, Manuel Delanda analyzes all the different genres of simulation (from cellular automata and genetic algorithms to neural nets and multi-agent systems) as a means to conceptualize the possibility spaces associated with causal (and other) capacities. Simulations allow us to stage actual interactions among a population of agents and to observe the emergent wholes that result from those interactions. Simulations have become as important as mathematical models in theoretical science. As computer power and memory have become cheaper they have migrated to the desktop, where they now play the role that small-scale experiments used to play. A philosophical examination of the epistemology of simulations is needed to cement this new role, underlining the consequences that simulations may have for materialist philosophy itself. This remarkably clear philosophical discussion of a rapidly growing field, from a thinker at the forefront of research at the interface of science and the humanities, is a must-read for anyone interested in the philosophy of technology and the philosophy of science at all levels.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 240 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism Shares philosophy
  2. Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche Shares philosophy
  3. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency Shares philosophy
  4. Dharma Road: A Short Cab Ride to Self Discovery Shares philosophy

“People who read Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Metapolitics
  2. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life
  3. The End of Certainty
  4. The Ecological Thought

“If you want more of the same (philosophy), start with these.”

  1. Free onlineFree Aristotle
  2. The Function of Reason
  3. On Plato's Symposium
  4. The Philosophy of Hegel

“Readers describe these the same way.”

  1. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays
  2. How to Have Courage, Calmness and Confidence (Wisdom of Yogananda, Vol 5)
  3. The God Game
  4. The Art of War: Sun Tzu's Classis in Plain English with Sun Pin's: The Art of Warfare

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Discrete-Event System Simulation
  2. The Nature of Code
  3. The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration
  4. Think Complexity: Complexity Science and Computational Modeling