Formal Models, Social Theory and Computer Simulations: Some Methodical Reflections

The article deals with the problem of general methodical foundations of computational sociology or mathematical sociology respectively. It proposes a universal schema for modelling, based on the conception of social domains as formal systems or nets. The goals for constructing formal models in the social sciences are defined as theory testing, theory developing and analysing universal Turing machines in order to obtain general laws concerning the behaviour of complex social systems. We illustrate our meta-theoretical considerations with different examples of our own research.