PHI 455LEC—Modeling Society

This course trains students to construct computational models and apply them to analyze social phenomena. After considering the nature and justification of computational modeling, the course covers the basics of NetLogo. It then surveys simple variations of cellular automata, similar to those developed by Thomas Schelling in the 1960-70s, before advancing to more recent work that attempts to model phenomena such as contagion, opinion dynamics, cooperation, coordination, and social networks. Along the way, we will study and reconstruct recent articles that apply computational models to address philosophical and social questions. By the end of the course, students will have constructed an original model to analyze a social phenomenon or problem.