The ground-breaking monumental piece of Wealth of Nation published in 1776 by Adam Smith paved the way for economics to distance itself from the moral science and established itself as an independent discipline. The gradual introduction of mathematics and statistics into this discipline further alienated it from other social sciences—often perceived as soft sciences for the wrong reason—and aligned itself with other commonly perceived hard sciences—also for the wrong reason, though—such as physics and biology.

The development of information science, computer technology and artificial intelligence since the mid-twentieth century has created further niche that economics can benefit from. The significance of such niche can be perceived in two ways. The first is the advancement in research methodology which establishes simulation as a third approach—other than the currently mainstream approaches of theory and history (i.e., empirical studies)—in the exploration of scientific knowledge. The second is the advancement in tackling the decades-old, if not centuries-old, problem of the interface between micro phenomenon and macro phenomenon—in economics, such an micro-macro interface issue can be best described as the microfoundation of macroeconomics. When humanity is perceived as a macro phenomenon waiting for exploration and explanation, human behaviors can then be programmed in ways—while relying on biological sciences and human experiments such as neuroeconomics and experimental economics for guidance—to the very bottom of each and every individual (i.e., agent) with minimum consideration of the human factors that administer our interactions with others. Simulated interactions among the agents can then be observed and compared with real life observations for further investigation. Moreover, on-line experiments conducted on real agents (i.e., human beings) can even be joined with the participation of software agents so that the “intelligence” of such software agents as compared with real agents can be determined and later be feedback into the development of future software agents.

Basically there is no limit on how this new approach can be applied and what area it can be applied to. When applied to social phenomena happening everyday surrounding everyone, it leads us to a new and different strand of social sciences called computational social sciences. The purpose of the following proposed NCCU Summer School on Computational Social Sciences, jointly proposed by faculty members from three different departments under the coordination of the AI-ECON Research Center of the Department of Economics, is exactly meant to propose and promote the development of computational social sciences in Taiwan. It is hoped that our efforts in introducing this area of research which is relatively new in Taiwan would broaden our understanding of it and invite more interested researchers to put efforts in it.

The first NCCU summer school has been held in 2007 and alll the details about this 2007 summer school, including program, pictures and course materials, are on the website (http://www.aiecon.org/2007_summer_school/). We do appreciate your contibution and your participation to continue these successful events in the future. See you this summer!!