ABSTRACT Computational science is intrinsically interdisciplinary; the methods of one scientist may be the objects of study for another. This essay is an attempt to develop an interdisciplinary framework that can analyse research into methods as a distinctive kind of epistemic orientation in science, drawing on two examples from fieldwork with a group of specialists in computer modelling. Where methods for simulation are objects of research in their own right, they are distinct in kind to the objects of simulation, and raise a different set of sociological and philosophical questions. Drawing on the historian Hans-Jorg Rheinberger’s theory of epistemic objects, I ask: what kind of epistemic object does a method make, and how is research organized around it? I argue that methods become objects of research as purposeful things, in terms of their enrolment in the intentional structure of the experimental system. And, as methods research tends to be interventionary, in the sense that its mode of study creates and modifies its objects, we therefore observe a practical recursion, a dynamic of scientific reinvention, a ‘tuning’ of experimental systems that sheds light on the form of these systems’ historicity, their differential self-reproduction.

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方法的不同之处：方法作为计算科学中的认知对象

摘要计算科学本质上是跨学科的。一位科学家的方法可能是另一位科学家的研究对象。本文试图建立一个跨学科的框架，该框架可以利用来自现场工作的两个实例以及一组计算机建模专家来分析方法研究，将其作为科学中认识论的一种独特形式。如果模拟方法本身就是研究的对象，则它们与模拟的对象在种类上截然不同，并提出了一系列不同的社会学和哲学问题。我要借鉴历史学家汉斯·豪尔格·莱茵伯格的认知对象理论，我问：一种方法产生什么样的认知对象，以及如何围绕它进行研究？我认为方法作为有目的的东西成为研究的对象，就其在实验系统的有意结构中的注册而言。而且，由于方法研究倾向于是介入性的，从某种意义上说，研究方法可以创建和修改其对象，因此，我们观察到了一种实用的递归，一种动态的科学重塑，一种“调整”了实验系统的形式。这些系统的历史性，差异性的自我复制。