ABSTRACT

In this chapter we will see how, starting from 1990, a series of somewhat autocratic or authoritarian decisions led to a further convergence, in particular by leading the CIRAD laboratory (which by that point was well established and flourishing) to join forces with INRA, despite an initial reluctance on the part of the physiological or eco-physiological modellers insofar as simulation was concerned. This epistemological reluctance and the debate that ensued will form the initial focus of this chapter. It is significant that, at the very moment when the various practices had diverged the most completely, it became essential to undertake an epistemological stocktaking and adaptation, which then had to be explicitly set out in the technical publications themselves, far removed from the realm of the epistemologists. The resistance focused principally on the necessity, or otherwise, of using simulation as what might be termed a “maximal model”, contrary to the traditional pragmatic-model epistemology that had always promoted the creation of “minimal models”. We will see how, based on this episode, the CIRAD laboratory created new combinations of disciplines (after the initial focus on botany, agronomy and computer graphics, forestry was also added) and institutions, enabling simulation to confirm its considerable powers of integration. It was also in the mid-1990s that universal simulation developed its empirical nature to the maximum, even in the eyes of its users, to the extent of creating a direct practice of simulation on simulation (such as, for example, the simulation of bad weather on a simulated forest). I will analyse the precise reasons, and their context, behind this remarkable practice that I propose to call “supra-simulation”.