Abstract

Relations between theory and empirical knowledge belong to basic problems in philosophy of science and have been undergone detailed philosophical reflection, including epistemological aspects. During last several dozen years, due to development of computer technology, numerical simulations became a common tool in natural sciences. Their epistemological aspects, however, have not worked out yet. A specific role of computer simulations manifests in subcellular biology, where possibilities of performing experiments and observations are limited. Computer simulation is complementary to observation and experiment and comes into complex relations with them. It allows us to come to a conclusion if experiment or observations are impossible to perform. In particular, simulations allow researchers to estimate the parameters that cannot be measured.