Modelling Krohn and Küppers’ theory of science as a self-organizing system

Abstract

Simulations of complex social systems involve a challenge, especially in the selection of one or more programming techniques to model adequately parts of a real system. The theoretical guidelines in this context are given by Klüver (this volume); here, I wish to demonstrate some examples of simulations with a particular type of neural network, an interactive network, to show the kind of problems can be simulated with such a technique. Neural networks are only seldom used in the social sciences. One reason may be the fact that there are a lot of different types of neural network and it is often not clear — even for the expert — which kind should be used for a specific problem. In addition, the mathematical algorithms for neural nets are not easily understandable. Yet, despite these problems neural networks offer many interesting possibilities, especially for social scientists.