A New Kind of Science

Rating:
Summary: Over hyped but still pretty cool¿
Review: I think the main problem with this book is that the author set expectations quite high, and in my opinion did not meet them. If this book had been called "1001 Cellular Automata" or "Interesting Relationships between Natural Processes" I think it would have come much closer to fulfilling it's promise.

But failing to live up to it's expectations does not make it just a door stop as some have suggested. The book is beautifully designed and printed. The resolution of the diagrams is the finest I've seen and it's fun just looking through them all. I have a background in Computer Science but little exposure to Cellular Automata, so the book was a good introduction to the various methods of constructing automata. I particularly liked the way the author exhaustively visited every type of process and compared and contrasted their behaviors. I also thought he did an excellent job organizing and explaining the material.

If your looking for the "keys to the universe" you'll probably be disappointed, but if your interested in mathematics and computer science I think you'll find it worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: A New Kind of Hot Air
Review: It was with a great disappointment I read this book, but I want to warn others before I let it recycle back to something more useful as cardboard-boxes ... I knew beforehand that Wolfram made bold statements, but the Eton-educated narcissist does not provide us with science. This is just 1197 pages of self-praise. I find it weird, because as far as I understand, he has made lasting constributions to at least particle physics and cellular automatata, (CA). In this book he claims that he - litterarily - presents significant or even revolutionary constributions to at least mathematics, physics, biology, social science, computer science, philosophy, art, and technology.
To give you an idea of the style i quote where he discusses "Some Past Initiatives". "My goals in this book are sufficiently broad and fundamental that there have been previous attempts to achieve at least some of them. But without the ideas and methods of this book there have been basic issues that have eventually ended up presentingalmost insuperable barriers to every major approach that has been tried." Unfortunately the only thing ge succeeds with is to make a fool out of himself. He is certainly not the only one in this branch of "alternative" science, but unlike his fellow characters he gets attention. The reason, I guess, is that Wolfram is a kind of genius and visionare. He is also the creator of Mathematica, in my experience the most fine crafted piece of software there is. He also has the economical power to market this [book].
It would be easy to write off this book as a simple scan that took ten years to pull off. But I do belove that he wants us to take him seriously, although I cannot help smiling when I read about his ideas on how this should be taught in school. Neither do I think the book is profitable for his company in the long run, because it devaluates the company by having this book associated with it.
So what about his "science". I know some will critisise me for not giving any examples. But seriously I see no point, because he does not prove any of his theories in any applied area, and he does not give any possibility to disprove it either. For example he does not have a clue on how to explain quantum mechanics with CAs. Perhaps he considers himself too grand for such menial work. He just says that he belives it can be found, and again refer to some of his "discovers", which either are old ideas or references to some of CA. If he could just give one example, such as the decay of a neutron using a CA, that could be tested if only in theory, I would have some respect left for him.
But ok, his science is something like: Nature seems to be complex, his CAs produces seemingly complex pictures, hence his CAs are the foundation of Nature. Incidentally I have worked on a better and more fundamental theory than him. Collect hot air from an over-inflated ego, and put it in the freezer. After a while it condenses into a pattern which is the foundation of all CAs.
One reviewer was concerned of the the consequences that Wolfram has copyrighted his ideas. The reviewer does not have anything to worry about.

Rating:
Summary: a new kind of taxonomic science
Review: Now that I have had some time to live with, and use, this book, it is becoming more clear that there is an aspect of novelty that has not so far been strongly brought out. Looking in the index, you will see that many of the 1D,2-Neighbor rules, e.g., rule 30, have extensive items associated with them. It struck me that Wolfram has opened up a new kind of experimental computer science -- the diligent and exhaustive investigation of artificial life species much as conventional botanists study natural species. The next step would be an attempt at true taxonomic organization which seeks higher level commonalities and differences among such species. Wolfram's four categories of 1D-3N CAs is only a start as it lays down an initial means to identify species without further organizing their properties (such as asymmetry, long run behavior, injectiveness, etc.) Such investigation would clearly need much computing power, giving challenging problems to computer and computational Grid architects and potentially giving us insights in "real" computational complexity, whether in nature or in technnology.

Rating:
Summary: a waste of my money and time...
Review: I bought this book as soon as it came out all excited to learn everything about "a new kind of science", but also somewhat sceptical after reading an early interview with the author; my experience has been that great scientists remain modest people, and the greater their contribution to mankind's knowledge, the smaller seemed their ego. This author was full of himself before the book came out, so that was a bad sign.

The first chapters were not boring, just didn't tell much new. Even before this book the average scientifically educated person must have known that this world is a complex place. Unlike the author of this book, I believe that the fundamental rules are not simple, at least not as simple as the cellular automata he is using. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt, hoping he would prove me wrong.

Anyway, one of the interesting findings in this book was the fact that on nearly every page he repeats the statement that this is a new kind of science. So I continued reading while waiting for this new kind of science to be described. It never happened.

This "new kind of science" is actually no science at all. Similar to psychoanalysis it is unprovable and will divide people in believers and non-believers. What this guy offers here is just another new belief system, something like a cellular automata-based religion. He is the prophet. Now he is traveling around and preaching the new religion.

Real truth sells itself. But this is not the case here.

Rating:
Summary: pretty boring book
Review: Too long and too heavy... good as a doorstop

Rating:
Summary: Simple Rule that explains the Universe.
Review: In my humble opinion, the author tries to show that-
--there may exist a "Simple Rule" for "Generating Existence".
--and that rule is probably computational (CA) rather than a mathematical equation.

Let's do the following- think of the Existence (I prefer the word over Universe) as a 4-dimensional structure (or n-dimensional if you choose). Now let's assume you could model the Existence as a string of 1s and 0s- a very large string, probably.

Now, here is a few observations:
- Humans (and to be precise each human-life) is a substring in this representation.
- One substring (Stephen, myself, or you) is trying to come up with a rule that describes the entire string. In my case, I simply abstract the string by calling it "Existence", physicsts want to come up with a "bunch of equations" whose solution would be this string, Mr. Wolram predicts that it is a CA that can generate this string, and Mr. Kurzweil thinks its a combination of equations and CA's.

If you go by the simplest- "Existence" is a good small explanation. All you have to do is first accept it intellectually.

Our human brain (the substring) has the somewhat unique capability of finding patterns in the String (Existence) and so that we can abstract it and store it in our brains (also called "understanding"), we want to come up with a rule because the String is too large.

Let's take the following example- reduce our problem to considering a "Rose" in stead of "Existence".

"Rose"-
I would call it a "Rose" observe it, realize that I cannot store the entire Rosee-String in my brain.

Mr. Wolfram contends that may be we can come up with a CA such that it will generate the Rose-string pattern.

Some Physicists contend that you can come up with an equation that will generate the Rose-string.

I think the understandable obsession to capture the underlying Rose-rule is just an obsession- there is no proof as far as I have seen that shows that it is possible to come up with a rule that will generate this Rose-string. Coming up with equations and rules that generate complex Strings is just what it is- rules and equations that generate complex strings. Now if we apply our cognition abilities to see patterns similar to "Existence"- I think that's a testimony to our pattern matching ability (we are probably running a Largest Common Substring algorithm!).

Let me put it another way- this Existence string can be mathematically interpreted as an Integer value- say 284,49....537. And that my friends is another abstract way of saying I found the underlying "Rule", the underlying "Number", the underlying "Equation" to Existence that which Is.

Existence Is.

Let's keep matching patterns, especially the useful one's to improve our lives (which is nothing but a "pre-determined in 4-dimensions" but not "pre-evaluated in time domain").

Let's not lull ourselves into a false sense of beleif that there is a simple rule. It "MAY" be that the Existence Number I just picked is 2 raised to the power 2002002 minus 1. Does that make it a "Simple Rule" explaining existence?

Or if the Existence Number is the 10 trillionth prime number -32 : Is that a "Simple Rule"?

Think about it- a "simple rule" for existence already exists- its what I call the "Existence Number".

What we really want to find is a rule that is simple enough for our comprehension but complex enough so that we can do interesting stuff with it? But what if the Existence Number really is what I just gave you!

-Anshu Sharma

Rating:
Summary: Sensational new point of view, but the proof of the pudding
Review: .... will be in the eating.

Last week I received my copy of this book from Amazon. In two respects this book is no light fare. Firstly, the book is 1200 densely printed pages long and weighs about 7 pounds. Secondly it is also far from light from a conceptual point of view.
Don't expect me to write at this stage a thorough going review of this book, which was published only a couple of months ago. I only started to sniff at it.

The author is a fairly young Englishman: Stephen Wolfram was born in 1959. He was educated at Eton, Oxford University and Caltech. About 15 years ago, he developed the program "Mathematica", a famous programming and calculating tool for scientists. At present, he is CEO of a firm which assures the commercial exploitation and further development of this tool.
Wolfram does not believe in false modesty. To cite the first sentences of the forword of his book:

"Just over twenty years ago I made what at first seemed like a small discovery: a computer experiment of mine showed something I did not expect. But the more I investigated, the more I realized that what I had seen was the beginning of a crack in the very foundations of science, and a first clue towards a whole new kind of science.
This book is the culmination of nearly twenty years of work that I have done to develop that new kind of science. I had never expected it would take anything like as long, but I have discovered vastly more than I ever thought possible, and in fact what I have done now touches almost every existing area of science, and quite a bit besides."

It would be impossible to summarize the difficult and rich contents of this book in a few sentences. So I will limit myself to the following:

While studying relatively simple computer programs ("cellular automatons"), Wolfram discovered that a relatively simple program can often produce amazingly complex output. Step by step, this caused him to develop a new look at the physical sciences. He is of the opinion that scientists have concentrated themselves unduly with those systems that can relatively easy be coverd by mathematical formula. From Wolfram's new point of view it appears that these systems are only peripheral cases. As soon as systems grow somewhat more complex, this approach reaches its limits. Wolfram claims that his approach will offer new ways of analysis in many of these cases.
During the last decades, biologists started to suspect that the complexity of living creatures is for a large part determined by rather simple structures, a notion that Wolfram enthusiastically endorses.

Wolfram expects from his new approach new insights in rather untractable problems like: the way human intelligence works, the origin of life, free will, the Second Main Law of Thermodynamics and (maybe) eventually even an explanation why the laws of physics are the way they are. New approaches like chaos theory and complexity theory get more substance from Wolfram's new point of view.

Slightly over three centuries ago, a certain Sir Isaac Newton wrote a difficult work, that would inspire science for the next three centuries: Historiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

I consider it quite likely that Wolfram's magnum opus will for the whole of the 21st century offer a lot of inspiration to science (not only to physics, but also to disciplines as biology, psychology, sociology and economics).
The English poet Alexander Pope, who understood the meaning of Newton's work quite well, wrote the following epitaph for him:

Nature and nature's laws
Lay hidden in the dark of night.
God said: "Let Newton be!"
And all was light.

If Stephen Wolfram is not completely mistaken (and I think he knows what he is writing about) future generations will say something similar of him. He certainly has a point. It certainly is an important book for scientists. However, the question is: how productive will his approach be? How many new scientific discoveries will be made thanks to it in the next twenty years?
I can't tell. It is clear that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Rating:
Summary: 10 years down the drain
Review: Knowing Wolfram's reputation, this reader was hoping the author was going to leave his huge ego in the closet and try to be convincing and at least somewhat interesting. Wolfram failed on both counts. Not only is the book an absolute bore (but then, mathematics has nothing to do with passion, or does it?), but its repeated promise of an epiphany falls flat on its face. Mr. Wolfram, a genius some say, has spent 10 years writing this book. I can understand he spent 10 years making pretty pictures to complement his arguments, and I can appreciate the metaphor CA represent for computation and complexity, but this book only shows expressions of computation, in nature and elsewhere, and then stands proudly like a fool on the hill... while everybody else went to town.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Money - Another Kind of Science: ISN'T
Review: A New Kind of Science is a total waste of money unless you are interested in cellular automata as the possible key to understanding the universe. There is no unified theory of anything ... no explanation of anything other than you can generate complex forms from simple computer instructions. No predictive value, only patterned pictures. The summary: pretentious bloviating by a commerical software genius and his marketing people. A New Kind of Science is only new if you don't know anything about the subject matter ... and there are cheaper ways to read about cellular automata. Perhaps it took 20 years to get the guts to publish a book where the footnotes and reference material tell more than the text.

Rating:
Summary: Why is there such divergence of opinion?
Review: ... I had high hopes for the book, and it is surprisingly easy, fun reading, but it does not take long to just feel sorry that so brilliant a mind has gone to waste.