Rating: 
Summary: Without Scientific Merit
Review: This book tries, unsuccessfully, to delve in what is called a Global Dynamics view -- such as, continuous dynamical systems consisting of state space and a mapping. Most recently, this kind of approach has been extensively revealed in Steven H. Strogatz's (1994) Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, with applications to physics, biology, chemistry and engineering. Conversely, Stephen Wolfram's (2002) A New Kind of Science, is filled with wonderful artistic illustrations but . . . the book is poorly written, poorly edited and because of these two reasons, the book is without scientific merit. The importance of Global Dynamics, to me, is that it may let us understand what is happening in the neural networks inside the animal brain which has been hidden from our investigatory view so far -- probably because we have only used top-down abstract-informational tools. This is why Wolfram continually sees this as "new science." It is, however, only new to him -- a problem with self-published books without peer review. In a dynamical evolving three-dimensional system, sets (think of this as a 3-D volume) of initial conditions are confined in a phase space. Over time, the initial condition volume contracts exponentially fast. They get more constrained over time. A history of that change can be reconstructed. But we are more interested in future predictions, given an indeterministic quantum universe. Importantly, the tightening constraints will limit the possible prediction-solutions we can get. Therefore it is easier for us to deal with them. If we use this approach, the number of possible solutions goes down from an impossible random event prediction . . . to either a set of fixed points, limit cycles or in some special cases, strange attractors -- which are much easier to work with. ...
Rating:
Summary: Save the trees!
Review: This is really bad...I can only agree with reviewers who gave
one star to this book. There is nothing new here, only a lot
of self-praise and some pretty pictures showing the power of
Mathematica. The New Kind of Science? That's laughable....
I am not an expert in cellular automata (I'm a physicist),
but it is abundantly clear that there is no breakthrough here. Wolfy tries to show that "his" ideas explain a spectacularly wide
range of phenomena, but offers no proof or even evidence
whatsoever. The fact that he doesn't have any references in this massive work
is even more disturbing. Anyone trained in science is taught,
as early as high-school, that it is crucial to reference and
acknowledge other people's work. It's a waste of talent - cursory reading of notes in the second
part of the book hints at the author's vast knowledge of CS, math, physics. Does Wolfy himself really believe this book will change the way science is done?
Rating:
Summary: An absolute scam
Review: I was one of those who waited for this book for more than a year, checking its status at least once a month and hardly being able to contain my nerdy excitment ... At what a huge disapointment when it came out !
I have a graduate degree in Theoretical Physics, so I am pretty confident I can tell real science from nonsense. Not sure how an otherwise respected scientist, who did produce some good physics in the past came up with such trivia trying to sell it as science.
I'm not trying to insult anyone, but the story the comes to mind is that of John Nas before it went mad.
Rating:
Summary: nothing new
Review: There is nothing new in the entire book!
Honestly, Wolfram needs a psychologist, not a publisher.
Rating: 
Summary: very interesting book
Review: I do not like the term "genius" but I do like very interesting ideas. The ideas in Dr.Wolfram's book may not be entirely original or new, but I don't think that is the point. Even though the book is written in a tone that I was not comfortable with, I try to focus on the thoughts and information that are new to me. The important thing to me is that it leads me to look at the world from a different perspective. And I think it is an important perspective.
I am also grateful for those reviewers (some obviously are experts in various fields) for pointing out the background information of these "new" ideas and the flaws of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Ehh. . .
Review: I am by no means a professional scientist, but I am a junior math major at a major university, so I'm not a complete moron either. This book does present some very interesting ideas, and the idea of cellular automata is neat, and he definately provides every possible combination of it imaginable to man. His conjecture is that the entire universe may be explainable by a very simple set of rules which end up producing what we have now (ie, the rules in "the game of life"). But from what I got from wading through it (it gets heavy at times), he doesn't really provide any real world examples. But it is interesting, but I'd look through it before I bought it.
Rating:
Summary: An annoying read, even for a layperson
Review: I'm not a mathematician, physicist, or any other kind of a scientist. I was a lit major, which makes my review of Wolfram's book perhaps a bit more biting. Knowing almost nothing about cellular automata, even I found the book boring. The first 400 pages could have been condensed into 40. Also, in this book I observed a degree of fuzzy thinking that I didn't expect from someone like Wolfram. What I found particularly egregious was the author's highly subjective statements, where phenomena are "seemingly" this, and "seemingly" that. I can only imagine what a mathematician might think when Wolfram gushes about the highly complex, and "seemingly" random patterns. Highly complex compared to what? Also, just because something is "seemingly random" (or seemingly anything), it isn't necessarily so. Wolfram uses an almost aesthetic intuition to make sweeping conclusions. As we know from quantum mechanics, intuition is very often wrong. Also, I don't find particularly insightful the notion that simple rules can produce complex systems. A spider can spin a SEEMINGLY complex Web, but it's obvious that a spider is a simple creature. Lastly, I did enjoy Wolfram's speculation on evolutionary biology: that natural selection does not necessarily drive biological diversity, but in fact, diversity is a manifestation of the very simple genetic rules that produce it. In other words, diversity is easy. The survival function, of course, is harder, but it in itself doesn't produce the diversity. Pretty interesting, although I'm sure evolutionary biologists in the audience already know that as well.
Rating:
Summary: groundbreaking
Review: I'm only in Chapter 3, but I am amazed. Wolfram is a genius. First he changed the computer world with Mathematica; now, with this book, he'll change science forever. I find it difficult to believe that his findings weren't discovered earlier, but I also realize that the advent of computing made this discovery much more probable. If you haven't read this book yet, I recommend at least learning what it's about. And if you have time, get a copy and read it for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: KIND OF SCIENCE
Review: The great librarian of Alexandria once said: "Big books - big misdeeds"
(approximate translation. The greek origin says: "Mega biblia mega KAKA" which is even better fit for the current case)
The most influencial natural science books were rather thin chromoless volumes. At our times science discoveries are communicated through short articles and this book is heavy, so heavy...
I have read about cellular automata. I have even read Wolfram's papers when they appeared in the eighties. He is brilliant, no doubt, but something went wrong, terribly wrong...
Having read this text, which it is extremely similar to the Mathematica manual, I am sorry to report that there is nothing "new" there. Yes there is some science from the eighties, supplemented by new "kind of science". The real new science of this book is elaborate PR effort , which is indeed a fascinating sociological event. My advice is to save your money and buy instead a couple of thousand-fold superior books. There are more cost-effective burning material alternatives....
Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Enterprise
Review: You will hate Wolfram for his idelible hubris. He is sometimes simply unbearable, specially when he announces that he is the Alpha of the theory of complexity, the beginner, the brain behind those astounding advances mankind made since... Pascal... Poincaré... and all those "algorithmical" geniuses from a broad landscape of mathematical thought. But you have to recognize that a new kind of science must have a new kind of "personator". Maybe Wolfram is, himself, that new kind of whimsical algorithm that makes us intensely interested in what can be described "intellectual adventure". As an architect I have an excellent time accompanying that very eccentric Virgil in the hell of complexity, as I had never had before. And he is truthful in a way: his research really made possible an ample, massive, front of developments in complexity science. So, throw the first stone those who never used MATHEMATICA in their research !
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