Editing Social complexity (section)

===Computational sociology===
{{Main|Computational sociology}}
The development of [[computational sociology]] involves such scholars as [[Nigel Gilbert]], [[Klaus G. Troitzsch]], [[Joshua M. Epstein]], and others. The foci of methods in this field include [[social simulation]] and [[data-mining]], both of which are sub-areas of computational sociology. Social simulation uses computers to create an artificial laboratory for the study of complex social systems; [[Data mining|data-mining]] uses machine intelligence to search for non-trivial patterns of relations in large, complex, real-world databases. The emerging methods of [[socionics]] are a variant of computational sociology.<ref>Gilbert, Nigel and Klaus G. Troitzsch (2005). ''Simulation for Social Scientists'', 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Open University Press.</ref><ref name=epstein07>Epstein, Joshua M. (2007). ''Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</ref>

Computational sociology is influenced by a number of micro-sociological areas as well as the macro-level traditions of systems science and systems thinking. The micro-level influences of [[symbolic interactionism|symbolic interaction]], [[exchange theory|exchange]], and [[rational choice theory|rational choice]], along with the micro-level focus of computational political scientists, such as [[Robert Axelrod (political scientist)|Robert Axelrod]], helped to develop computational sociology's [[:wikt:bottom-up|bottom-up]], [[agent-based]] approach to modeling complex systems. This is what [[Joshua M. Epstein]] calls [[generative science]].<ref name=epstein07 /> Other important areas of influence include [[statistics]], [[mathematical modeling]] and computer [[simulation]].