ABSTRACT
Today, probably the best-known engineering use of differential equations is in modelling real-life phenomena, engineering systems and industrial processes. Running such a model on a computer produces a simulation of the phenomenon, engineering system or industrial process. Originally, the word simulation, and others related to the same root, such as simulate or simulator, had other meanings, mainly with negative connotations. Thus, we can read in a Latin dictionary (Kidd, 1993), ‘simulatio ... pretence, shamming, hypocrisy’, or ‘simulo -are ... imitate, represent, impersonate, pretend, counterfeit’. In such a sense we meet the imperative simulate in Mozart’sDon Giovanni (scene 22, certainly attributable to the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte). Recent dictionaries include the original meanings, but add the new meaning that interests us. For example, in Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1990) we read, ‘simulation .. 1: the act or process of simulating :FEIGNING 2: a sham object: COUNTERFEIT 3 a: the imitative representation of the functioning of one system or process by means of the functioning of another < a computer ˜ of an industrial process >. ...’
