Science In The Age Of Computer Simulation

Download or read book Science in the Age of Computer Simulation written by Eric Winsberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computer simulation was first pioneered as a scientific tool in meteorology and nuclear physics in the period following World War II, but it has grown rapidly to become indispensible in a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including astrophysics, high-energy physics, climate science, engineering, ecology, and economics. Digital computer simulation helps study phenomena of great complexity, but how much do we know about the limits and possibilities of this new scientific practice? How do simulations compare to traditional experiments? And are they reliable? Eric Winsberg seeks to answer these questions in Science in the Age of Computer Simulation. Scrutinizing these issue with a philosophical lens, Winsberg explores the impact of simulation on such issues as the nature of scientific evidence; the role of values in science; the nature and role of fictions in science; and the relationship between simulation and experiment, theories and data, and theories at different levels of description. Science in the Age of Computer Simulation will transform many of the core issues in philosophy of science, as well as our basic understanding of the role of the digital computer in the sciences.

Download or read book Philosophy and Climate Science written by Eric Winsberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and accessible introduction, as well as an original contribution, to the main philosophical issues raised by climate science.

Download or read book The Simulation Hypothesis written by Rizwan Virk and published by Bayview Books, LLC. This book was released on 2019-03-31 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Simulation Hypothesis, by best-selling author, renowned MIT computer scientist and Silicon Valley video game designer Rizwan Virk, is the first serious book to explain one of the most daring and consequential theories of our time. Riz is the Executive Director of Play Labs @ MIT, a video game startup incubator at the MIT Game Lab. Drawing from research and concepts from computer science, artificial intelligence, video games, quantum physics, and referencing both speculative fiction and ancient eastern spiritual texts, Virk shows how all of these traditions come together to point to the idea that we may be inside a simulated reality like the Matrix. The Simulation Hypothesis is the idea that our physical reality, far from being a solid physical universe, is part of an increasingly sophisticated video game-like simulation, where we all have multiple lives, consisting of pixels with its own internal clock run by some giant Artificial Intelligence. Simulation theory explains some of the biggest mysteries of quantum and relativistic physics, such as quantum indeterminacy, parallel universes, and the integral nature of the speed of light. Recently, the idea that we may be living in a giant video game has received a lot of attention: “There’s a one in a billion chance we are not living in a simulation” -Elon Musk “I find it hard to argue we are not in a simulation.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson “We are living in computer generated reality.” -Philip K. Dick Video game technology has developed from basic arcade and text adventures to MMORPGs. Video game designer Riz Virk shows how these games may continue to evolve in the future, including virtual reality, augmented reality, Artificial Intelligence, and quantum computing. This book shows how this evolution could lead us to the point of being able to develop all encompassing virtual worlds like the Oasis in Ready Player One, or the simulated reality in the Matrix. While the idea sounds like science fiction, many scientists, engineers, and professors have given the Simulation Hypothesis serious consideration. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has popularized the idea of downloading our consciousness into a silicon based device, which would mean we are just digital information after all. Some, like Oxford lecturer Nick Bostrom, goes further and thinks we may in fact be artificially intelligent consciousness inside such a simulation already! But the Simulation Hypothesis is not just a modern idea. Philosophers like Plato have been telling us that we live in a “cave” and can only see shadows of the real world. Mystics of all traditions have long contended that we are living in some kind of “illusion “and that there are other realities which we can access with our minds. While even Judeo-Christian traditions have this idea, Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism make this idea part of their core tradition — that we are inside a dream world (“Maya” or illusion, or Vishnu’s Dream), and we have “multiple lives” playing different characters when one dies, continuing to gain experience and “level up” after completing certain challenges. Sounds a lot like a video game! Whether you are a computer scientist, a fan of science fiction like the Matrix movies, a video game enthusiast, or a spiritual seeker, The Simulation Hypothesis touches on all these areas, and you will never look at the world the same way again!

Download or read book Simulation and Its Discontents written by Sherry Turkle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the simulation and visualization technologies so pervasive in science, engineering, and design have changed our way of seeing the world. Over the past twenty years, the technologies of simulation and visualization have changed our ways of looking at the world. In Simulation and Its Discontents, Sherry Turkle examines the now dominant medium of our working lives and finds that simulation has become its own sensibility. We hear it in Turkle's description of architecture students who no longer design with a pencil, of science and engineering students who admit that computer models seem more “real” than experiments in physical laboratories. Echoing architect Louis Kahn's famous question, “What does a brick want?”, Turkle asks, “What does simulation want?” Simulations want, even demand, immersion, and the benefits are clear. Architects create buildings unimaginable before virtual design; scientists determine the structure of molecules by manipulating them in virtual space; physicians practice anatomy on digitized humans. But immersed in simulation, we are vulnerable. There are losses as well as gains. Older scientists describe a younger generation as “drunk with code.” Young scientists, engineers, and designers, full citizens of the virtual, scramble to capture their mentors' tacit knowledge of buildings and bodies. From both sides of a generational divide, there is anxiety that in simulation, something important is slipping away. Turkle's examination of simulation over the past twenty years is followed by four in-depth investigations of contemporary simulation culture: space exploration, oceanography, architecture, and biology.

Download or read book Co-designers written by Yanni Alexander Loukissas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is organised around the accounts of professional designers engaged in a high-stakes competition to redefine architecture in the context of computer simulation.

Download or read book Computer Meets Theoretical Physics written by Giovanni Battimelli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a vivid account of the early history of molecular simulation, a new frontier for our understanding of matter that was opened when the demands of theoretical physicists were met by the availability of the modern computers. Since their inception, electronic computers have enormously increased their performance, thus making possible the unprecedented technological revolution that characterizes our present times. This obvious technological advancement has brought with it a silent scientific revolution in the practice of theoretical physics. In particular, in the physics of matter it has opened up a direct route from the microscopic physical laws to observable phenomena. One can now study the time evolution of systems composed of millions of molecules, and simulate the behaviour of macroscopic materials and actually predict their properties. Molecular simulation has provided a new theoretical and conceptual tool that physicists could only dream of when the foundations of statistical mechanics were laid. Molecular simulation has undergone impressive development, both in the size of the scientific community involved and in the range and scope of its applications. It has become the ubiquitous workhorse for investigating the nature of complex condensed matter systems in physics, chemistry, materials and the life sciences. Yet these developments remain largely unknown outside the inner circles of practitioners, and they have so far never been described for a wider public. The main objective of this book is therefore to offer a reasonably comprehensive reconstruction of the early history of molecular simulation addressed to an audience of both scientists and interested non-scientists, describing the scientific and personal trajectories of the main protagonists and discussing the deep conceptual innovations that their work produced.

Download or read book Computer Simulation and Data Analysis in Molecular Biology and Biophysics written by Victor Bloomfield and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-05 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introduction to two important aspects of modern bioch- istry, molecular biology, and biophysics: computer simulation and data analysis. My aim is to introduce the tools that will enable students to learn and use some f- damental methods to construct quantitative models of biological mechanisms, both deterministicandwithsomeelementsofrandomness;tolearnhowconceptsofpr- ability can help to understand important features of DNA sequences; and to apply a useful set of statistical methods to analysis of experimental data. The availability of very capable but inexpensive personal computers and software makes it possible to do such work at a much higher level, but in a much easier way, than ever before. TheExecutiveSummaryofthein?uential2003reportfromtheNationalAcademy of Sciences, “BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future - search Biologists” [12], begins The interplay of the recombinant DNA, instrumentation, and digital revolutions has p- foundly transformed biological research. The con?uence of these three innovations has led to important discoveries, such as the mapping of the human genome. How biologists design, perform, and analyze experiments is changing swiftly. Biological concepts and models are becoming more quantitative, and biological research has become critically dependent on concepts and methods drawn from other scienti?c disciplines. The connections between the biological sciences and the physical sciences, mathematics, and computer science are rapidly becoming deeper and more extensive.