Paul E. Smaldino
Wildman and Shults have laid out an ambitious scope for their book, Modeling Religion: Simulating the Transformation of Worldviews, Lifeways, and Civilization. I laud their aims and echo their enthusiasm for modeling. However, I also believe that Wildman and Shults largely fail to achieve their goals. Their models are neither clear nor well justified, and so their results are not compelling. The book’s value is in the attempt, and in the discussions which are based more on interpretations of empirical data than on conclusions from the published models. I believe it will be instructive to explain why I think the goals of the book were not achieved. To do so, I will first explain a bit about how the models work. I will then discuss general guidelines for the use of formal models to understand complex social dynamics, and how Wildman Shults fail to meet them.