SciCom

Simulating various aspects of scientific communication via Agent-based models.

In this first version, we introduce an agent-based modelling approach to reconstruct communication in the Republic of Letters.

Documentation is available on ReadTheDocs.

Installation

tl;dr Use pip

pip install scicom

Consider using a clean virtual environment to keep your main packages separated. Create a new virtual environment and install the package

python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install scicom

Examples

You can find an example Jupyter Notebook showing the use of the LetterSpace model in the examples folder.

Alternatively, you can use the mesa server framework to create an local browser interface with changeable parameters, see screenshot below and documentation on running mesa.

Testing

Tests can be run by installing the test requirements and running tox.

pip install scicom[test]
tox

Building documentation

The documentation is build using sphinx. Install with the docs option and run

pip install scicom[docs]
tox -e docs

Funding information

The development was part of the research project ModelSEN

Socio-epistemic networks: Modelling Historical Knowledge Processes,

in Department I of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (Grant No. 01 UG2131).

The work is continued in the department for Structural Changes of the Technosphere at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena.