From the Foreword by David Voas (University College London)

It is said that Erasmus was the last man who knew everything, though the label has been applied to a number of others. Sadly, our brains would explode if we tried to absorb even a small fraction of the current stock of knowledge, but a few polymaths still walk among us. Wesley Wildman and LeRon Shults are two of them.

It is rare to find scholars who know so much about so much: simultaneously foxes who know many things and hedgehogs who know one big thing, as Isaiah Berlin might have put it. And how that breadth and depth is needed here! How else could we comprehend, in a single work, the Neolithic transition to agriculture, the Axial Age, and the onset of secularization in modernity? It is an immense achievement.

Wildman and Shults do not claim to be experts on all of the topics they cover, though I know from experience that they are too modest. Their contribution comes from theoretical synthesis allied with skills in model-building and the power of contemporary computing. I am reminded of how Richard Feynman explained his ability to solve problems that had resisted the best efforts of colleagues at MIT and Princeton: “I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.” Feynman was also too modest, of course, but the point is that creative application of new or unusual tools can produce remarkable results.

Computational social simulation is both well established and still fairly novel. The progress that has been made over the past few decades is astonishing. For my PhD research at Cambridge in 1978-81, I used simulation in conjunction with historical research to try to explain the persistence of low fertility in equatorial Africa. At that time it was possible for even an ungifted novice to know most of what had been done previously. I wrote code in FORTRAN and put stacks of punch cards into the jaws of a machine that would read them into the mainframe. I’d then wait nervously for hours, if not overnight, to see whether a misplaced comma had brought the job to a halt. In the end I did obtain some answers, and they shed light on a phenomenon that had puzzled demographers for decades. I was sold on simulation.

I promptly defected from the academy, however, and only returned in middle age after making some money, pondering the meaning of life, and wandering from the City of London to Bulgaria via many points in-between. Since my return to the world of academic research I have received numerous grants, large and small, but the very first funded a project entitled “Computer simulation and the study of religious change.” My experience a couple of decades earlier had convinced me that the approach was fruitful. The field had become enormously more sophisticated, though, and I emerged from the experience with little more than an appreciation for how much remedial education I would need in order to contribute anything useful. I veered off the road less traveled and back onto the highway of conventional social science.

Another two decades on, the literature on computational models has developed beyond all recognition, along with the hardware and software available for this work. In Boston, Wesley Wildman founded the Center for Mind and Culture, which has played a leading role in the use of modeling and simulation to explore the interaction of psychological, cultural, and sociological factors that lead to social goods, ills and change. In Kristiansand, Norway, LeRon Shults established the Center for Modeling Social Systems to develop conceptual and computational models for analyzing and predicting psychological and societal change. I have had the good fortune of serving as a subject matter expert on a couple of their projects, and it has been fascinating to observe this research at first hand.

Faced with the tension between lumpers and splitters, between scholars in search of generalizations and those who focus on particularity, Wildman and Shults have achieved a synthesis: there is a forest (see Chapter 6!), but they observe the trees as well. Actual history is singular and gives us scant leverage when trying to understand complexity. Computational social simulation enables us to rewind the past again and again, under varying conditions, to see what matters.

We are lucky to have such good guides to our past, present and future. I continue to learn from them, and I am delighted that this book will enable others to share that good fortune.

From the Preface

What kind of book is this? At one level, this is a book about human worldviews and lifeways and how they change. That means it is also a book about religion, its varied roles in human life, and the shape of secular worldviews and lifeways after the decline of religion in certain cultural settings. At another level, this book tells a story about human civilizations, charting how they transition by destabilizing one equilibrium arrangement and eventually regathering around a new stable equilibrium. At yet another level, this book is about how computers can help us understand human life through a powerful methodology called computational social simulation (CSS). We believe CSS can generate novel insights into both human history and the challenges facing human societies today.

We’re not alone in working at any of these levels. Many scholars have sought to understand religious and nonreligious views of reality and ways of life. A fascinating group of intellectuals have attempted to chart the development of human civilizations. And, in the past several decades, as the power and flexibility of computing machines has increased, many researchers have turned to CSS to capture the complexity of human social life, to explore policy options, and to extend cognitive control over social systems that can be difficult to comprehend in their intricate complexity.

Combining these three levels of research is where this book makes a distinctive contribution. Our overarching goal is to ask and answer a deceptively simple question. What role does religion play in the seismic transformations of civilizational form? This book offers an interpretation of the long history of human beings, as a suite of other books have done. But it makes a case for how to move beyond speculation in talking about the deep past, as well as more recent periods of human history, and even the not-so-distant future.

The book also tackles the urgent question of what sort of civilizational transformations might be possible in a world where the influence and significance of religion continues to decline wherever technology, education, freedom, and cultural pluralism are most advanced. Will this trend spread globally? Will it reverse course? How do moral frameworks and social stability arise in postreligious cultures? What does the past teach us about our likely futures?

Theories represented in the scholarly literature as competing explanations are not always mutually exclusive. The consistency demands of computational models are helpful for evaluating the degree to which putatively competing models can be rendered as complementary perspectives on a more complex process. When integrated in a theoretical architecture it may turn out that key elements of competing theories are in fact consistent. Each of the models considered in this book takes advantage of deep complementarity between explanations, thereby benefiting from numerous theoretical perspectives, including newer empirical findings from the scientific study of religion.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Why Model Religion?
Religion Matters
Studying “Religion” Through Transdisciplinary Human Simulation
The Modeling Religion Projects
Worldviews and Lifeways
Preview

Chapter 2: Civilizational Transformation
What Drives Civilizational Transformation?
Ideological-Political Theories
Material-Social Theories
Cognitive-Coalitional Theories
Can Theories of Civilizational Transformation Be Synthesized?
A Heuristic Matrix for Theoretical Integration

Chapter 3: Computational Simulation
From Narratives to Formal Models to Computational Simulations
The Conversion Paradigm
The Promise and Peril of Computational Humanities and Social Sciences
Artificial Ethics
Artificial Ontology and Epistemology
Next Steps

Chapter 4: Modeling the Neolithic Transition
Why Model the Neolithic Transition?
Synthesizing Theories
NSIM: The Neolithic Social Investment Model
Simulation Experiments
How Religion Mattered in the Neolithic

Chapter 5: Modeling the Axial Age Transition
Why Model the Axial Age Transition?
Synthesizing Theories
MAxiM: A Computational Simulation of the “Axial Age”
Simulation Experiments
How Religion Mattered in the Axial Age

Chapter 6: Modeling the Modernity Transition
Why Model the Modernity Transition?
Synthesizing Theories
The FOReST Model
Simulation Experiments
How (Non)Religion Matters in Modernity

Chapter 7: Insights and Prospects
Transition Dynamics
Likely Futures for Religion and Spirituality
Likely Futures for the Human Project

Repositories Containing Model Details
References
Index