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Chapter 1
Introduction

Bruce Edmonds and Ruth Meyer

Abstract This introduces the themes of the book inherent in its title: Simulating
Social Complexity. In a deliberate homage to the work of Herbert Simon, it traces
the roots of these themes back to his work. It then explains the structure of the
handbook with its different parts: introductory, methodological on different kinds of
mechanism and applications. It briefly introduces each chapter within this structure.

Why Read This Chapter?
To understand some of the background and motivation for the handbook and how it
is structured.

1.1 Simulating Social Complexity

As the title indicates, this book is about Simulating Social Complexity. Each of these
words is important:

Simulating—the focus here is on individual- or agent-based computational simu-
lation rather than analytic or natural language approaches (although these can
be involved). In other words, this book deals with computer simulations where
the individual elements of the social system are represented as separate elements
of the simulation model. It does not cover models where the whole population
of interacting individuals is collapsed into a single set of variables. Also, it
does not deal with purely qualitative approaches of discussing and understanding
social phenomena, but just those that try to increase their understanding via the
construction and testing of simulation models.
Social—the elements under study have to be usefully interpretable as interacting
elements of a society. The focus will be on human society but can be extended
to include social animals or artificial agents where such work enhances our

B. Edmonds ( )•R.Meyer
Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, All Saints
Campus, Oxford Road, Manchester, M1 6BH, UK
e-mail: bruce@edmonds.name

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 3
B. Edmonds, R. Meyer (eds.), Simulating Social Complexity,
Understanding Complex Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66948-9_1