Computational Science News
Computational science is a discipline concerned with the design, implementation and use of mathematical models to analyse and solve scientific problems. Typically, the term refers to the use of computers to perform simulations or numerical analysis of a scientific system or process. Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a rapidly growing branch of applied computer science and mathematics that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science which spans many disciplines, but at its core, it involves the development of models and simulations to understand natural systems. In practical use, it is typically the application of computer simulation and other forms of computation from numerical analysis and theoretical computer science to solve problems in various scientific disciplines. The field is different from theory and laboratory experiment which are the traditional forms of science and engineering. The scientific computing approach is to gain understanding, mainly through the analysis of mathematical models implemented on computers. Scientists and engineers develop computer programs, application software, that model systems being studied and run these programs with various sets of input parameters. The essence of computational science is the application of numerical algorithms and/or computational mathematics. In some cases, these models require massive amounts of calculations (usually floating-point) and are often executed on supercomputers or distributed computing platforms. Actually the science which deals with the Computer Modelling and Simulation of any physical objects and phenomena by high programming language and software and hardware is known as Computer Simulation Computational science is now commonly considered a third mode of science, complementing and adding to experimentation/observation and theory (see image on the right).Here, we define a system as a potential source of data,an experiment as a process of extracting data from a system by exerting it through its inputs and a model (M) for a system (S) and an experiment (E) as anything to which E can be applied in order to answer questions about S.A computational scientist should be capable of In fact, substantial effort in computational sciences has been devoted to the development of algorithms, the efficient implementation in programming languages, and validation of computational results. A collection of problems and solutions in computational science can be found in Steeb, Hardy, Hardy and Stoop Philosophers of science addressed the question to what degree computational science qualifies as science, among them Humphreys and Gelfert.They address the general question of epistemology: how do we gain insight from such computational science approaches. Tolk uses these insights to show the epistemological constraints of computer-based simulation research. As computational science uses mathematical models representing the underlying theory in executable form, in essence, they apply modeling (theory building) and simulation (implementation and execution). While simulation and computational science are our most sophisticated way to express our knowledge and understanding, they also come with all constraints and limits already known for computational solutions
Last Updated on: Nov 30, 2024