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About the network Digital twins offer the possibility of interconnected virtual representations of the world around us. The digital twin concept has been adopted widely by multiple communities of practitioners, researchers and innovators. In particular policymakers and governmental agencies have identified digital twins as having many potential applications offering a wide range of societal benefits. Part of the digital twin paradigm is about interconnecting and integrating digital objects, many of which have previously not been combined, often to address socio-technical applications. The different starting points, assumptions, cultural practices, biases and motivations of those involved, means that discussions across the socio-technical sphere are often at cross-purposes and without a common philosophical world view.
Therefore, the philosophical context which underpins the concept of digital twins is an important area to make clear. This leads to a set of philosophical principles for digital twins, which are intended to help facilitate their further development. We argue that the philosophy of digital twins is fundamentally holistic (e.g. anti-reductionist). Furthermore, digital twins are reconstructivist, meaning they are designed to reconstruct (some or all of) the behaviour of a physical twin by assembling a series of ‘components’, such as models, agents and data sets. Importantly, these digital twin components have the potential to capture emergent behaviours when they are dynamically assembled. Understanding the philosophical context allows a conceptual model for digital twins to be developed. Professor David Wagg Co-director for Infrastructure, Turing Research and Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins (TRIC-DT); Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield
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