The use of computer simulation techniques in sociology.

The article discusses the use of computer simulation techniques in sociology. The investigation and exploitation of the immense facilities offered to the sociologist by the use of computers are still in embryo. In a given field of application, the diffusion of the techniques for automated processing of information generally goes through three stages, automation of existing procedures, borrowing from other disciplines the automated procedures that are proper to them, and conception of new procedures suggested by the possibilities of data-processing. Sociology is still far from reaching that third stage. The objectives of the first phase have, in general, been achieved, techniques for the extraction of data from surveys, and techniques for statistical analysis and content analysis, have been automated and to some extent improved. The second phase, that of applications new in sociology but in fact borrowed from other disciplines, at present contains only one acquisition, inherited from operational research, the group of simulation techniques. Simulation techniques allow of the solution of a problem by which sociologists have been beset since the beginnings of sociology, that of the operative formulation of theories, making it possible to test the coherence and compatibility of those theories with the observations. Simulation is a good substitute for calculation methods when the latter are inapplicable, incomplete.