Rethinking Theory Construction in Social Science

Title: Rethinking Theory Construction in Social Science
Date: Tuesday 11th March 2014

Time: 9:45am – 17:20pm

Location: Room B.07; 32 Lincoln’s Inn Fields; LSE

Speakers:

Prof. Mark Addis (Birmingham City University);

Prof. Fernand Gobet (University of Liverpool);

Prof. Leonard Smith (LSE);

Dr. Charlotte Werndl (LSE)

This interdisciplinary conference with speakers from Philosophy; psychology and statistics explores a novel research agenda arising from computational scientific discovery aimed at automatically generating theories in social science. Such theories are produced using genetic programming which estimates their success by the extent to which they account for experimental data and selects the best theories for the next generation (with possible modification by mutation or crossover). Some implications of this employment of genetic programming for the philosophy of social science will be considered. Currently the development of scientific theories is regarded as an exclusively human activity but the research agenda challenges this conception of theory construction. In doing so it becomes possible to regard social science theories as computationally tractable concrete objects rather than