Robert M Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration, Princeton studies in complexity (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1997).
This book builds upon Axelrod's earlier work on cooperation--specifically using the Prisoner's Dilemma--by adding complexity to the mix. "Adding complexity to that framework allows the exploration of many interesting and important features of competition and collaboration that are beyond the reach of the Prisoner's Dilemma paradigm" (3).
"Complexity theory involves the study of many actors and their interactions. The actors may be atoms, fish, people, organizations or nations...a primary tool of complexity theory is computer simulation" (3).
"Agent-based modeling is a third way of doing science. Like deduction, it starts with a set of explicitly assumptions. But unlike deduction, it does not prove theorems. Instead, an agent-based model generates simulated data that can be analyzed inductively. Unlike typical induction, however, the simulated data come from a rigorously specified set of rules rather than direct measurement of the real world. Whereas the purpose of induction is to find patterns in data and that of deduction to find consequences of assumptions, the purpose of agent-based modeling is to aid intuition" (3-4).
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