Cyrille Imbert

CNRS, University of Lorraine · Archives Poincaré

Scientific collaboration has been increasing over the past two centuries, a fact for which various explanations have been proposed. We offer a novel functional explanation of this increase in collaboration, grounded in a sequential model of scientific research where the priority rule applies. Robust patterns concerning the differential successfulne...

Various errors can affect scientific code and detecting them is a central concern within computational science. Could formal verification methods, which are now available tools, be widely adopted to guarantee the general reliability of scientific code? After discussing their benefits and drawbacks, we claim that, absent significant changes as regar...

Introduction to the 2018 SPS conference

Deliberative and decisional groups play crucial roles in most aspects of social life. But it is not obvious how to organize these groups and various socio-cognitive mechanisms can spoil debates and decisions. In this paper we focus on one such important mechanism: the misrepresentation of views, i.e. when agents express views that are aligned with...

Abstract: Computers have transformed science and help to extend the boundaries of human knowledge. But does the validation and diffusion of results of computational inquiries and computer simulations call for a novel epistemological analysis? I discuss how the notion of novelty should be cashed out to investigate this issue meaningfully and argue t...

In this paper I investigate the potential explanatory value of computer simulations, which are often said to be suitable tools for the prediction, emulation or imitation of phenomena, but not for their explanation. Similarly, they are described as providing brute force (number-crunching) methods that are helpful to investigate the behaviour of phys...

Computational science and computer simulations have significantly changed the face of science in recent times, even though attempts to extend our computational capacities are by no means new and computer simulations are more or less accepted across scientific fields as legitimate ways of reaching results (Sect. 34.1). Also, a great variety of compu...

Computational science and computer simulations have significantly changed the face of science in recent times, even though attempts to extend our computational capacities are by no means new and computer simulations are more or less accepted across scientific fields as legitimate ways of reaching results (1.1). Also, a great variety of computationa...

Epistemic accounts of scientific collaboration usually assume that, one way or another, two heads really are more than twice better than one. We show that this hypothesis is unduly strong. We present a deliberately crude model with unfavorable hypotheses. We show that, even then, when the priority rule is applied, large differences in successfulne...

Epistemic accounts of scientific collaboration usually assume that, one way or another, two heads really are more than twice better than one. We show that this hypothesis is unduly strong. We present a deliberately crude model with unfavorable hypotheses. We show that, even then, when the priority rule is applied, large differences in successfulnes...

Why are some models repeatedly used within and across scientific domains? Examples of such striking phenomena are the harmonic oscilla- tor, the Ising model, a few Hamiltonians in quantum mechanics, the Poisson equation, or the Lokta-Volterra equations. Even though theories allow for many more modeling possibilities, such models and combinations of...

This paper shows that, under certain reasonable conditions, if the investigation of the behavior of a physical system is difficult, no scientific change can make it significantly easier. This impossibility result implies that complexity is then a necessary feature of models which truly represent the target system and of all models which are rich en...

This paper shows that, under certain reasonable conditions, if the investigation of the behavior of a physical system is difficult, no scientific change can make it significantly easier. This impossibility result implies that complexity is then a necessary feature of models which truly represent the target system and of all models which are rich en...

In Woodward's causal model of explanation, explanatory information is information that is relevant to manipulation and control and that affords to change the value of some target explanandum variable by intervening on some other. Accordingly, the depth of an explanation is evaluated through the size of the domain of invariance of the generalization...

Experiments (E), computer simulations (CS) and thought experiments (TE) are usually seen as playing different roles in science and as having different epistemologies. Accordingly, they are usually analyzed separately. We argue in this paper that these activities can contribute to answering the same questions by playing the same epistemic role when...

We analyze the effects of the introduction of new mathematical tools on an old branch of physics by focusing on lattice fluids, which are cellular automata (CA)-based hydrodynamical models. We examine the nature of these discrete models, the type of novelty they bring about within scientific practice and the role they play in the field of fluid dyn...

article accepté par Matière Première, numéro spécial consacré à la physique, sous la direction de Soazig Le Bihan, en cours de publication, date de publication provisoire

RÉSUMÉ : À rebours des discussions sur l’explication, qui semblent faire de la pertinence explicative un problème unique, plusieurs critères de pertinence explicative sont ici distingués. Est en particulier soulignée l’importance de la notion de pertinence intra-scientifique, qui est analysée de façon précise sur la base de l’explication de la loi...

Edition of a collection of articles. Publisher : Routledge

Synthese 180:1 (2011). Special issue ed. with Roman Frigg and Cyrille Imbert. With contributions by Alisa Bokulich, Uskali Mäki, Christopher Pincock, Stathis Psillos, and Jan Sprenger. Link: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-009-9562-4

article accepté par la revue Philosophie, en cours de publication, date de publication provisoire

Whereas computer simulations involve no direct physical interaction between the machine they are run on and the physical systems they are used to investigate, they are often used as experiments and yield data about these systems. It is commonly argued that they do so because they are implemented on physical machines. We claim that physicality is no...

Throughout the different sciences, there are recurrent phenomena, such as Poisson distributions, which seem to have similar explanations. These phenomena can be described by transversal regularities which are not laws but nevertheless do not seem spurious. One may wonder if these phenomena really have something in common and if these similarities a...

Le sophiste et ses images : épistémologie du temps simulé Les simulations donnent l’impression de ressembler aux systèmes qu’elles représentent, au point d’en être peut-être des analogues. Dans cet article, je discute d’abord les différentes notions de temps qu’il faut distinguer pour bien analyser les simulations puis je montre sur cette base que,...

N° spécial : Modèles, simulations, systèmes

In this paper, I criticize Bedau's definition of ‘diachronically emergent properties' (DEPs), which says that a property is a DEP if it can only be predicted by a simulation (simulation requirement) and is nominally emergent. I argue at length that this definition is not complete because it fails to eliminate trivial cases. I discuss the features t...

Cellular Automata (CA) based simulations are widely used in a great variety of domains, fromstatistical physics to social science. They allow for spectacular displays and numerical predictions. Are they forall that a revolutionary modeling tool, allowing for “direct simulation”, or for the simulation of “the phenomenon itself”? Or are they merely m...

Computer simulations are usually considered to be non-explanatory because, when a simulation reveals that a property is instantiated in a system, it does not enable the exact identification of what it is that brings this property out (relevance requirement). Conversely, analytical deductions are widely considered to yield explanations and understan...