The uniform model of the nucleus, proposed by Wigner in 1937, assumes that the motion of the nucleons within the nucleus are so complicated, and the interactions between them are so strong, that the details of the motion are of no great importance. This model, therefore, differs diametrically from the shell model of the nucleus, in which each nucleon is assumed to move independently of all others to a first approximation, the various nucleons filling up a regular sequence of possible orbits (shells). In this paper we re-examine the evidence for the uniform model to see whether, in the light of data accumulated since the time the model was proposed, the agreement between the predictions of the uniform model and experimental binding energies is sufficiently good to serve as an argument against the shell model. This is found not to be the case. The uniform model gives qualitative agreement with experiment, but the detailed quantitative agreement is only moderately good. This rather indifferent record must be compared with the excellent evidence for nuclear shell structure in the same region of mass numbers. Nevertheless, we feel that the uniform model should not be abandoned altogether, but rather should be reinterpreted to apply to the “characteristic state” postulated by Hurwitz and Bethe, rather than to the ground state. No test of this hypothesis is possible until more is known experimentally about the level spectra of nuclei. In this connection a modified semiempirical form is suggested for the density of nuclear levels as a function of excitation energy.