INTRODUCTION
Prelude to Chapter 1: THE GENERATIVIST MANIFESTO
Chapter 1 AGENT-BASED COMPUTATIONAL MODELS AND GENERATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE

Prelude to Chapter 2: CONFESSION OF A WANDERING BARK
Chapter 2 REMARKS ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF AGENT-BASED GENERATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE

Prelude to Chapter 3: EQUILIBRIUM, EXPLANATION, AND GAUSS’S TOMBSTONE
Chapter 3 NON-EXPLANATORY EQUILIBRIA: AN EXTREMELY SIMPLE GAME WITH (MOSTLY) UNATTAINABLE FIXED POINTS

Prelude to Chapters 4–6: GENERATING CIVILIZATIONS: THE 1050 PROJECT AND THE ARTIFICIAL ANASAZI MODEL
Chapter 4 UNDERSTANDING ANASAZI CULTURE CHANGE THROUGH AGENT-BASED MODELING
Chapter 5 POPULATION GROWTH AND COLLAPSE IN A MULTIAGENT MODEL OF THE KAYENTA ANASAZI IN LONG HOUSE VALLEY
Chapter 6 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN THE PREHISTORIC AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

Prelude to Chapter 7: GENERATING PATTERNS IN THE TIMING OF RETIREMENT
Chapter 7 COORDINATION IN TRANSIENT SOCIAL NETWORKS: AN AGENT-BASED COMPUTATIONAL MODEL OF THE TIMING OF RETIREMENT

Prelude to Chapter 8: GENERATING CLASSES WITHOUT CONQUEST
Chapter 8 THE EMERGENCE OF CLASSES IN A MULTI-AGENT BARGAINING MODEL

Prelude to Chapter 9: GENERATING ZONES OF COOPERATION IN THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA GAME
Chapter 9 ZONES OF COOPERATION IN DEMOGRAPHIC PRISONER’S DILEMMA

Prelude to Chapter 10: GENERATING THOUGHTLESS CONFORMITY TO NORMS
Chapter 10 LEARNING TO BE THOUGHTLESS: SOCIAL NORMS AND INDIVIDUAL COMPUTATION

Prelude to Chapter 11: GENERATING PATTERNS OF SPONTANEOUS CIVIL VIOLENCE
Chapter 11 MODELING CIVIL VIOLENCE: AN AGENT-BASED COMPUTATIONAL APPROACH

Prelude to Chapter 12: GENERATING EPIDEMIC DYNAMICS
Chapter 12 TOWARD A CONTAINMENT STRATEGY FOR SMALLPOX BIOTERROR: AN INDIVIDUAL-BASED COMPUTATIONAL APPROACH

Prelude to Chapter 13: GENERATING OPTIMAL ORGANIZATIONS
Chapter 13 GROWING ADAPTIVE ORGANIZATIONS: AN AGENT-BASED COMPUTATIONAL APPROACH

Agent-based computational modeling is changing the face of social science. In Generative Social Science, Joshua Epstein argues that this powerful, novel technique permits the social sciences to meet a fundamentally new standard of explanation, in which one “grows” the phenomenon of interest in an artificial society of interacting agents: heterogeneous, boundedly rational actors, represented as mathematical or software objects. After elaborating this notion of generative explanation in a pair of overarching foundational chapters, Epstein illustrates it with examples chosen from such far-flung fields as archaeology, civil conflict, the evolution of norms, epidemiology, retirement economics, spatial games, and organizational adaptation. In elegant chapter preludes, he explains how these widely diverse modeling studies support his sweeping case for generative explanation.