15: Scientific Simulation

New technologies bring with them the need to develop new literacies. This is certainly the case with simulations. Simulations—specifically computer simulations—are computer programs designed to model or replicate a particular system. Computer simulations are rapidly becoming the principal tool of scientific and mathematical modeling in physics, chemistry, earth science, and biology. Computer simulations are also being used to model systems in economics, psychology, and the social sciences.

Simulations go back to antiquity. Provenzo (in press) contends that the development of modern painting and book illustrations during the Renaissance period represents attempts to substitute models or simulations for actual things—such as maps representing the world, engravings representing places, or anatomical etchings representing the human body. Computer simulations, however, are a relatively new phenomenon. Their beginning probably has its origins with the Manhattan Project in World War II, when simulations were used to help model the mechanisms for the Defense Department’s detonation of the first atomic bomb (Computer simulation, 2008).