A New Kind of Science

Rating:
Summary: A New Kind of Egomania
Review: Apart from the permutations of cellular automata demonstrated in the illustrations, this work covers no new ground whatsoever either scientifically or philosophically. The most important point of all--the ontological leap from computer simulation to the physical/biological REAL world--is simply assumed. Computational equivalence between the activities inside a program to the various 3-D manifestations of physical form is a worthless conjecture without a rigorous argument to back up that claim. But to make it would require Wolfram to enter the "great conversation" and actually use other scientists' and philosophers' theses as launching points, something he apparently was not willing to do. Done right, this would have required a book apiece in each discipline (physics, molecular biology, etc.), not a single volume which seems to be willfully ignorant of the past twenty years of complexity studies.

Apart from that crucial point, the book is bad in other ways--very poorly written (the book being self-published, he obviously didn't trust his editor, if he had one) and contains at least three long-winded "histories" of his monumental "discoveries."
This work might be a footnote in the history of general science, and merit passing mention in the history of complexity studies, but only because of the monumental ego and ambitions of its author, not for anything novel, challenging, or surprising.

Try the works of Stuart Kauffman, John Holland, and Chris Langton for some real groundbreaking work in complexity, cellular automata, and their relations to the world.

Two stars for the interesting illustrations.

Rating:
Summary: Wolfram needs to read the latest literature
Review: Cellular automata is not new. The use of CA for modelling is not new. The theories that he disputes are not current. It is similar to arguing that his science is new because it refutes the fact that we are not the center of the universe. The only way any of this would get published in a reviewed journal is if he paid the editor. Which is exactly what he did to get this published.

Rating:
Summary: A New Kind of Plagiarism
Review: A New Kind of Plagiarism

Consider the following scenario: a mischievous person spends its free time for years copy pasting datum's about relativity theory. From many sources he compiles an enormous amount of information ALL taken from other people publications. Then, using in a literal sense Einstein's theory as he wrote it he uses it as the main theme (that he repeats over and over again) of a gigantic book full of all the information he gathered, in other words makes a compendium. He includes in this book the results of some computer games devised by others that he runed time and time again. Then he puts his name as author, does not include references and attributes everything to himself!. So he starts telling people, before publishing (and spends a huge amount of money on shameless self promotion for "his" upcoming book) that he is going to revolutionize science like never before anyone has managed to do. He announces to the world that his revolution will touch all cultural manifestations of mankind. He starts to be heralded as the "new Copernicus", the "super Newton", the "best mind in history", etc. Remember, his upcoming book, according to his own words will "change everything in philosophy, science, government and society in general, in fact, every aspect of mankind's culture". So the excitement grows to unprecedented heights (the publicity campaign is enormous) and the common folk grows impatient for the upcoming revelations. And, alas, the "greatest book in human history" arrives to the libraries one fine day. But wait, this book is just a compendium of things other people said, and worst, the guy is claiming to be the first to say this!. In fact, the main theme on the book is a shameless copy-paste of Einstein's theory of relativity!. So quite a lot of people discover the hoax and are appalled at the extent of the plagiarism, while the public in general is still being subjected to (paid) bogus reviews (the publication of the century!, one mercenary "reviewer" hollers). So a great confusion arises. Is this book a work of genius, that is going to revolutionize mankind's knowledge and way of life, or is it a gigantic hoax, a shameless attempt to steal many ideas from many people, a pathological self promotion by a chronic liar?. As always, some not really well informed good souls try to take a middle ground, but, how can someone seriously take a middle ground when someone says he just wrote the bible?. The whole ordeal seems out of a dramatic novel except that is happening right before our noses!. "A New Kind of Science", is, in fact, a recompilation of things that the proponents of Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory have said decades ago. There is not even the will to disguise this fact. The statements in the book are almost a copy-paste of what they said time and time again, even to the media!. I dare anyone to point out a single original idea in the whole monstrous plagiarism!. This kind of shameless theft of ideas is, indeed, unprecedented in human history. So, yes, in a way the book is unique, although only in the monstrosity of the plagiarism. Now then, many readers will think that such an easily verifiable fact as this one (that the book is just a compilation of other peoples ideas) will end once and for all the hype about the author, but, as one enlightened 20th century individual said "merchandising will be the philosophy of the 21 first century". In effect, given the enormous publicity campaign the book is still subjected to, it is quite possible that the "average Joe" for years to come (and, who knows, maybe for the rest of history) will think that the author delivered his promise!. The sad possibility is that the "new geniuses", at least for the popular mind, will be self promoted shameless pathological liars (there have been already many examples of this).
Let us hope that in this case (certainly the worst of all), intelligence will prevail and the book (and author!) will be given its rightful place!.

Rating:
Summary: Revived Paradigms
Review: It is easy to become distracted by Stephen Wolfram's hubris (overbearing
pride or presumption) and lose sight of the issues that this book brings
forth. I choose to overlook the hubris and focus on the
important concepts that this book describes in some detail. In a number
of areas, even outside of his main theme that simple rules can produce
complex behavior in systems, Wolfram proposes paradigm shifts that I
believe are important and necessary to the way Western science should be

conducted in the future.

First, by presenting his ideas in an easily read book (I appreciate the
double spacing), Wolfram steps around the inbred limitations of
science's peer reviewed journal system for disseminating ideas and
information. The book itself is a change in how important ideas are
presented for review and comment. It is an unfortunate fact that the
Western scientific tradition of peer reviewed journal system stifles
new ideas and usually limits the dissemination of these ideas only to
scientists in a specific discipline or sub-discipline. It is sad that
the publication of scientific information is contingent upon the review
of others who may not appreciate or understand a new idea and/or who
might have a political axe to grind. Even when these hurdles are
overcome, the information is generally received by a limited group of
people in a limited discipline. And, the usual disciplinary buzzwords
and stifling language further serves to limit the field of interest.
So, the published work of a physicist may never reach a biologist even
though that biologist's work is in critical need of some new ways of
doing things.

Stephen Wolfram overcomes the problems of limiting minds, petty
politics, and interdisciplinary information flow by writing a book that
is easy to read and readily available to everyone. For this alone, I
laud his effort and hope that A New Kind Of Science becomes a model for
communicating ideas that others will follow.

Another important issue emphasized by the book is science's conceptual
"tug of war" between the mathematical analysis of data and the analysis
of scientific data by creating and observing pictures. There are large
groups of researchers who believe that the path to knowledge only comes
from reducing all data to a number (a statistic) or a mathematical
formula. This approach is generally known as reductionism. This
approach to science has enjoyed success in physics and genetics. But
reductionism fails miserably when complex systems are studied because
interesting complex systems can never be predicted by a formula and can
rarely be reduced to a statistic. The system must be simulated in order
to see what it looks like. And, we humans are usually visual learners.
A clear picture of a complicated process is a far better path to
understanding than the tables and charts that are typically used in
scientific presentations.

A New Kind Of Science is a book that calls for a "new" way of thinking
within the scientific community. Some would call it a paradigm shift.
Actually, Wolfram's proposed way of thinking has been around for some
time. Wolfram, his predecessors, and his contemporaries were
instrumental in the early study and promotion of cellular automata (CA)
models. Then, in the mid 80's and early 90's, the Artificial Life
community, a wide range of theoreticians and philosophers, and a large
group of recreational geometers used CAs and fractals extensively to
portray complex systems. Unfortunately, wild promises and premature
visions never came to fruition - causing a sharp decline in interest.
In my mind, this was tragic because it is the simulation paradigm that
holds the greatest promise of producing analytical tools for
understanding the complex systems that make up our existence.

If we have any hope of gaining new knowledge about such
topics as ecosystem behavior, plant/animal development, or our universe,
we must develop new analytical tools that will help provide this
knowledge. I hope that A New Kind Of Science, by summarizing a
knowledge base in a controversial style, will stimulate discussion and
create a launching pad that will develop the new ideas necessary to
correlate computer-based system simulations with real phenomena in
nature.

Rating:
Summary: My Goodness, the Grammar, The Grammar!
Review: Today I checked out the few preview pages on Stephen Wolfram's site. The graphics were pretty, and some of the ideas that he presented were, at first glance, attractive, but the majority of paragraphs and sentences started with "and", "but", "or", or "yet"! Come on, if this book was proofread *once*, somebody would point this out! I'm planning on buying the book, but I'm going to edit it myself. ...

Rating:
Summary: A Truly Revolutionary Book
Review: An absolutely amazing, truly ground breaking book. The controversy it has stirred up hasn't been seen since the days of Darwin's Origin of the Species. It has excited people, it has angered people, it has stirred up the scientific, computational, and philosophical communities like nothing else. Wolfram has joined the ranks of Newton, Darwin, Einstein and Hawking. Read the book, make your own decision.

Rating:
Summary: This book is bogus
Review: I have been very very enthusiastic to see this book for almost 2 years now and ordered it on the same day it was out. I found the book very very disappointing and far far from being revolutionary. I am an applied mathematician with a very good knowledge of non-linear science, chaos and complexity. Despite Mr. Wolfram's claim in his earlier interview on the fact that cellular automata (CA) represent about 20 percent of the examples in the book, a quick browsing throughout the book shows that more than 80 percent of the book is about CA. This book is not about A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE; it is actually about not-so-new science of CA.
New or old science, one has to set terminologies and definitions so people understand exact meaning of terms used in the theory. This book brings up the concept of "Complexity" as frequent as thousand times but the author doesn't bother to define what "complexity" means and more importantly how to MEASURE it. It is scientifically (New or Old) improper to decide about the degrees of complexity by looking at the some pictures. One cannot build an intellectual structure based on some visual intuitions that occur frequently in the book. It also sounds very superficial to explain things like the shapes of snowflakes and leaves and the patterns on a mollusk shell by employing CA and then claiming that CA are capable of explaining the whole Universe. Science has a lot less concern about the shapes and visual forms of phenomena than their internal structures. Hadn't I known Mr. Wolfram's background in fundamental science I may have thought of him as a loner crank. I would also like to make the following brief comments about the book:

1- The book is extremely repetitive and boring.... " A simple rule implies complexity" X 1000
2- The author's narcissistic viewpoints is highly repellent.
3- The book lacks conventional references to prior work that is related to the author's narcissism, I guess.

Stephen Wolfram may have been a genius in the past but he is now an ordinary man (non-scientist) with many wrong ideas. I am going to return the book ASAP and find some satisfaction in some more modest science as I have been doing so. I do not recommend this book to people with serious interest in science.

Rating:
Summary: Premature Dismissals of These Ideas?
Review: I am afraid many of the self-styled intellectuals who've reviewed this book must be poor readers. It is true that Wolfram derives his theories solely from computer simulations, and one hopes that he and others will test their application in real-world experiments. If they don't hold water, they will quickly be exposed. But to dismiss them without disproving them is no better than to claim them without proving them, in my opinion. My uninformed and largely intuitive sense is that there is some meat on this bone, although how much remains to be determined. The author's ego notwithstanding, I think his aim was to introduce an avenue of thought to guide exploration that, while not new in and of itself, might well be applied in a new approach to attempting to understand natural and physical phenomena. I'm neither a scientist or mathematician, but this book and the reviews here have sparked a heretofore latent or else non-existent interest sufficient that I now find myself forming a reading list of other books on related topics that I want to read. If it were only to have that same effect on a fair number of people, I think the book would demonstrate merit and warrant being widely read. If in the process someone discovers the key that unlocks greater understanding of our universe, so much the better. I for one am not sorry I read the book, and would strongly recommend it to layperson's such as myself that want to broaden the horizons of their thinking.

Rating:
Summary: Reviewing the reviews....
Review: I confess I haven't read the book, I was just browsing the reviews and pondering whether to buy it or not. However, I couldn't help sharing my amazement at some reviews:
-"This could be the most important book of this millennium, affecting our concept of biology, economics, history, man and the universe." - Top 1000 Reviewer
-"It could be that Wolfram will rightly be hailed as the Isaac Newton of the twenty-first century" - Top 100 Reviewer
-"the reading of A New Kind of Science leaves a feeling of being privileged to witness a Copernican revolution from the front row"
-"This book itself is a monument, written by an absolute genious"
Such comments made me highly suspicious, to say the least...

I will buy the book, but I'm not expecting to be amazed anymore: I just hope not to be too disappointed. Could it be that "A new kind of science" turns out to be just "A new kind-of science" ?!

Rating:
Summary: A New kind of faith?
Review: I was eagerly waiting for this book like many others because of all the hype/advertising but was extremely disappointed.
Nothing is New in this Book.
Many of the statements in the books are base on Wolfram's personal believe and this is not real science where you are suppose to prove what you think is true!
Is more like a religion. So maybe Wolfram can claim now income tax exception to IRS. He will just need to get some people that also believe what he does as followers (I guess that will be with the companion Web site to his book) (New kind religion on the Horizon!).
This book is also advertising for Mathematica (does not really need the advertising since it should stand on it's own merits).
You do not need Mathematica to do any of the simple programs contain in the book. Any programming language will do too.
I get one thing clear out of this book and that is if you are sufficiently rich you get to publish any book with your personal believe even if they turn out to be wrong and making a fool of yourself in the process. I guess Science after all is like poetry only starving poets produce good poetry maybe only starving scientists can produce good science.
How can one person waste 20 years in this?