The politics of physicists' social models

Submitted to the special issue of the Comptes Rendus Academie des Sciences (CRAS) devoted to the applications of (statistical) physics to social sciences at large, edited by J Ph Bouchaud and JP Nadal : 8 pages, 1 figureInternational audienceI give an overview of the topic of this special issue, the applications of (statistical) physics to social sciences at large. I discuss several examples of simple social models put forward by physicists and discuss their interest. I argue that while they may be conceptually useful to correct our intuitive models of social mechanisms, their relevance for real social systems is moot. What is more, since physicists have always needed to tame the world inside laboratories to make their models relevant, I suggest that social modeling might be linked to human taming, a smashing political project