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Summary: An example of ego overcoming the marketplace of ideas
Review: Unfortunately, the overblown ego of Steven Wolfrum, has kept him both from submitting his ideas to criticism before publishing. Had he done so, he would have learned not only that his ideas are not as unique as he claims, but also that others have done a better job of expressing his "big ideas."In many ways, I'm not a capable reviewer of this book. His many-time repeated attempts to tell me that his ideas were incredibly new turned me off to the book so much that I was unable to complete it. Still, this may be indicative.
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Summary: Trivializes quantum mechanics
Review: I haven't read the whole book (and don't intend to). Intrigued by some comments in this forum, I read the 10 or so pages that discuss quantum mechanics. A well known theorem (Bell's theorem) says that no local realistic theory can mimic QM. "Local" means no faster-than-light communication, and "realistic" means physical quantities exist at all times. It's weird, but true, that a correct theory cannot have both of these features. Many experiments have tested Bell's theorem (it passes). Wolfram's cellular automata theory is realistic, so it must be nonlocal. He admits as much (near p. 545, or so), claiming that there are non spatial "threads" connecting separated objects. This is a revolutionary claim for which he provides no motivation, evidence, or predictions. In the notes section he dismisses the issue as not significant. This will come as a great surprise to the many distinguished physicists who regard it as the most unsettling feature of QM.
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Summary: the science won't be the same
Review: It is a tradition in the science superceeded by this book to use mathematical models in attempt to quantify the system behavior. However the fatal limitation of these models is the need to reflect the chracteristics and possibly even structural relationships between the components within the systems. Little success was achieved in areas where the system behavior was unclear or there was no appropriate mathematical apparatus. However in this book a new paradigm is developed. By the author. Of this book. Who also wrote a computer program. And has his own company. Unlike you. (A list of computers author ever owned attached.) Anyway, in the facing picture you can see two curves. The left represents UV picture of baboon's bottom. The right is a result of evolution of rule 110 with the starting conditions author selected from 1 billion possibilities. As you can easily see they have nothing in common. Which of course illustrates the point that many different frameworks (lambda-calculus, Turing machines and others) are in some ways equaly powerfull. As everyone knew for more than 50 years. And based on these remarkable discoveries in this book we can now say that really simple rules can produce a very large books indeed. And the science won't be the same.
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Summary: From Complexity Theory to Complexity Science
Review: Wolfram, a leading light in the field of Complexity Theory, explains this area of mathematics clearly and shows how it can be extended to into a Science of Complexity. He ranges widely, covering particularly Artificial Life, Physics, and the implications of complexity in Computer Science. If you can ignore your arrogance alarm for 1200 pages you will be rewarded with a tour de force of mathematics education. The visualizations are superb. If it had a bibliography I would give it 5 stars....
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Summary: I will NOT shush! ...
Review: I can't help but believe it is premature to call this a new kind of science for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Wolfram - though obviously brilliant - is doing something others have done long before, and continue to do, though his purpose and method are singular. I don't understand why he is so adamant about excluding everyone else and taking 100% credit, as if he were a spoilt child told to share, and so gives up the smallest cookie in the bag. Secondly, though this book is an excellent work on the study of patterns, and could make a huge contribution to simplifying research, the book never addresses the fact that beyond the naked eye, solid forms are mostly empty space. He doesn't seem to have solved the problem of what programs will put the particles in place that make up forms at this level. Instead he just deals with more superficial appearances, even when showing three-dimensional forms. Without this piece to the puzzle, I can't help but wonder why he is so insistent on the superiority of his method. The most interesting thing about this book is that while few (if any) scientists will defend Mr. Wolfram in his claims, scores of journalists (read: dilettantes) are leaping to the cause, explaining the work better than he does in the book, and even chastising the science community for being jealous. Since I am just an armchair reader on science and math subjects, I can safely say that the book is not daunting for the general public, because it is written in the style of a conversation. This conversational style includes Wolfram constantly referring to himself throughout the work, and to his ideas as if the reader were desperately curious as to how he sees the world. (This is a kind way of saying he comes across as full of himself quite often.) All told, however, this book provides much food for thought. Hopefully Wolfram's ideas will be found useful, and lead to more innovation in scientific research.
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Summary: Disappointing!
Review: I initially was so very excited to have this book! I informed my spouse that it would probably take me a year to digest it. Unfortunately, a couple of nights of reading revealed it to be a sham. If it wasn't Wolfram writing, Iwould think it was prepared by a fraud who was trying to convince us it was of great foundational worth. It isn't. The poorest scientific reading I have encountered.
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Summary: Not new and not good science
Review: The new kind of science is basically cellular automata (CA), a field initiated in the 1940's by John von Neumann. Wolfram's idea is basically to relate other sciences to CA in one book and attempt a simple common theme. Often a basic understanding of an area of science focuses on principles, that can be computed using differential equations or whatever. But his new kind of science involves an evolution of very simple local rules over neighborhoods in a numerical array. The rules themselves are devoid of deep principles. His science involves a single simple CA algorithm that supposedly underlies all of particle physics and the dynamics of large systems such as a whole galaxy or the universe. Wolfram's spin on CA in the many diverse fields of science is that it can all be done with a very simple structure that establishes a maximum (but small) complexity for all systems. He calls this "The Principle of Computational Equivalence". One of Wolfram's major contributions is his Rule 110 which he proves to be equivalent to a Turing machine, a system that can compute anything that is computable. We readers are satisfied that his very simple 2-D binary CA is universal and can compute anything in the sciences, if we know how to set and start the automaton. Philosophically this is fine although it would be very cumbersome and much more efficient using floating point on a pocket PC, which is also a Turing machine. But Wolfram tries to switch us to believe that a very simple machine specifically using CA is the basis of all sciences, and the universe. This is an unjustified leap from a simple Turing type machine in 2 dimensions to the warped, expanding 4 dimensions of space-time along with several more dimensions for particle physics. There is a strong difference between saying that the universe can be "computed" with a Turing machine versus saying that the universe "is" a simple CA. This intellectual leap is not proven but is a guess by Wolfram. Wolfram disparages many successful areas of science as having "insuperable barriers" (top of page 12), but he wants to substitute these faulty "previous attempts" with his particular CA concepts. With few exceptions Wolfram does not show us how to do the computations that he says underlies the sciences, but when it comes to a hard relationship with his brand of CA to science, all chapters of his book are replete with phrases such as "I believe", "I firmly believe", "I suspect", "I expect", "It seems", "my guess", "presumably", "perhaps", "most likely". He uses these phrases 17 times under "The Validity of the Principle" [of Computational Equivalence], which are hardly the right words for a chapter on the validity of anything. These phrases are used 36 times under the seven pages of "Ultimate Models for the Universe". This continual discourse of unsubstantiated personal belief hardly leads to a book on science, let alone a book on a new kind of science. One of the most successful applications of CA in today's sciences is finite element analysis, and it is puzzling that Wolfram mentions the word in passing only once (p. 940 in the notes). However finite element analysis is indeed a decades old form of CA and has been very successful in computations of all types of complex dynamic systems. It is self-contradictory that he disparages the CA of finite element analysis, while essentially condoning it in his own way in his book. Summary: The idea of CA has been fully understood and firmly embedded in many fields, and so is not really a new kind of science. Wolfram apparently tries to take credit for many ideas already well understood and discovered by others long before him; he continually uses the phrase "I discovered". However, the footnotes at the end of his book, which look almost like an afterthought clarify the historical perspective a little. He degrades other sciences for being incomplete, yet offers an undeveloped substitute that he only guesses to be correct. If you are interested in science, this book is not worth reading at all because it doesn't lead anywhere substantial in science. For those who are unfamiliar with CA, this book may be interesting, but gives a very myopic view of the CA field. If you want a mind expanding exercise, it is much more worthwhile to invest your mental energy in Douglas Hofstadter's book Godel, Escher, and Bach.
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Summary: A New Scientific Revolution
Review: Steven Wolframs' new book, A New Kind of Science, has been receiving an enormous amount of criticism, and some modest amount of praise. Yes he does appear to (on occassion) blur the distinction between his own highly original ideas and those Cellular Automata (CA) theorists who came before him. But Mr. Wolfram has broken lots of new ground and shown how many complex physical and biological phenomena can be modelled by CA. Will his book really lead to a new kind of science? The objective truth is that it's just too soon to tell. As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his masterpiece, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, we need to wait and observe how many other scientists start using and testing Wolfram's methods and approaches. What will be critical is how many younger scientists decide to "try out" this new science. If they make bold discoveries within the next decade, then we'll know that indeed Wolfram has launched a truly new approach to modelling and analysis of reality. If, on the other hand, CA remain a tool for those specializing in algorithms, then we'll still have to award Mr. Wolfram an "attaboy" award for making such a unique and inspiring contribution. A final point: A lot of people are saying Mr. Wolfram is claiming that the universe appears to be more and more "like a computer". What is actually the case is that computers are valuable to the extent that they are microcosms of the universe. The universe isn't like a big computer: A computer, that is, a well-designed computer, is like a small universe.
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Summary: Cheap Shots
Review: Thirty minutes spent at the keyboard stewing up ill-considered attacks and easy sarcasms do not obviate 10 years of work; "anonymous professors" are gut-less worms, hence nothing in the context of Stephen Wolfram's dedication. The ignorance of carping, clue-less "assassins of the word" is exceeded only by their lack of restraint and character. A genius shall be measured by the multitude of self-appointed critics; wanna-be intellects misinterpreting, misrepresenting, and miscalculating what A New Kind of Science will bring are on the losing side of history and progress.
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Summary: A New Kind of Megalomania
Review: The book is very heavy. If you like to read on your back, it will hurt your tummy. A lighter version would say this: - there are many kinds of cellular automata - some of them, despite their apparent simplicity can generate complex or beautiful output (don't tell the publisher, but automata rule #143 generates this book after about 25 million steps) - the new kind of science is that you should study simple rules and find out if any of them generate nature. this is faster than looking at nature and trying to uncover simple underlying rules since there are far less simple rules than there are observable phenomena - when this approach is tried on fundamental physics, it renders chapters that are as un-understandable to me as regular fundamental physics - the approach can be applied to any part of science, so everyone get to work
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