Abstract

Historians have been slow to include computer simulations into their discipline’s methodological apparatus. This chapter details the challenges faced when trying to employ simulations for historical research. Central to this is the idiographicIdiographic character of historical research, which leads to problems regarding computer simulations and validation. Historians are concerned with the unique, with distinct historical processes, whose ultimate result is known. They do not formulate general laws or rely on deductive-nomological approaches. But this should not keep historians from exploring the potentials of computer simulations to the full extent: Big-data projects may help to dissolve the nomothetic-idiographic divide, microhistorical research may profit from simulations for contextualization or to compensate for fragmentary sources. In all cases, validation has the potential to make historians reflect more on evaluative assumptions, and on the ways, they pose questions and explain processes.