The paper investigates what is meant by "good science" and "bad science" and how these differ as between the natural (physical and biological) sciences on the one hand and social sciences on the other. We conclude on the basis of historical evidence that the natural science are much more heavily...

The objectives of this paper are to define and classify different types of errors and artefacts that can appear in the process of developing an agent-based model, and to propose activities aimed at avoiding them during the model construction and testing phases. To do this in a structured way, we...

The reductionist/holist debate seems an impoverished one, with many participants appearing to adopt a position first and constructing rationalisations second. Here I propose an intermediate position of pragmatic holism, that irrespective of whether all natural systems are theoretically...

The merits of modelling within a logical, as opposed to Bayesian, framework is discussed. It is claimed that a logical formalism is more appropriate for modelling qualitative decisions and that this framework makes the unfolding of process more apparent. This difference in approach leads to...

It is argued that the credible modelling of economic agents from a bounded rationality perspective, implies a certain difference of approach from those involved in designing agents for a specific task or environment. Some of the ramifications of this are that learning in the resulting models can...

Wider issues of the validation of computational models - ascertaining that they are sound and consistent relative to some logical formalism and/or substantive theory - have not been a subject of the management science literature. In this paper, we demonstrate that computational models can be...

It is argued that complexity has only a limited use as a paradigm against reductionist approaches and that it has a much richer potential as a comparable property. What can complexity be usefully said to be a property of is discussed. It is argued that it is unlikely to have any useful value as...

There are considerable difficulties in the way of the development of useful and reliable simulation models of social phenomena, including that any simulation necessarily includes many assumptions that are not directly supported by evidence. Despite these difficulties, many still hope to develop...

This is an introduction to the special section of JASSS on the above topic. It argues for the importance of qualitative evidence in social science, and particularly in the specification of agent-based models. It ends by suggesting some criteria for judging methods for using qualitative evidence...