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Wolframania
An Anonymous Coward writes "The New York Times has had a couple of articles about Stephen Wolfram in the last couple of weeks. Is he self-aggrandizing or brilliant? Or both? And is God a software engineer?" I thought our reader-contributed review of ANKOS was quite good.
about a serious scientist claiming that his theories would replace the entire physical model of the universe ?
Some geniuses did such work, but I never have heard anyone of them making such claims without the in-depth review of others. I must admit I've never heard of any genius exaggerating his own theories so much at all.
Some people say that's a relatively sure sign for being a crackpot.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Everywhere you look, almost everyone is saying, well, even if he is wrong, he's written a hell of a book. Which I suppose is true.
1250 pages represents an awful lot of wasted time if he's not right. From what I've read, it seems Wolfram never sought peer review. That seems very curious to me. I think I'll wait for more reviews.
I must disagree with this statement. The way science is forged is by having other scientists spotting gaps in your arguments. That the gaps in an unreviewed work do not walk up to the non-specialist reader and introduce themselves does not mean they do not exist.
-Justin
That's enough posting for now lads, there're trolls afoot.
I went to a Quantum Approaches to Consciousness meeting at NAU. One current popular theory is that matter in the universe is an uncollapsed wave equation with infinite extent until some form of consciousness observes the matter in question - it is the act of observation that collapses the quantum wave equation.
While this is not my field, it is close (I have published in both quantum mechanics and biochemistry and my PhD is in biophysically related field), and I would caution interest in so called quantum consciousness. Not because it is necessarily wrong, but because many of those who believe it want to believe it so much that they are incapable of changing thier mind. (The cold fusion field has similar zealots)
-Sean
God's meant to be omnipotent, he can do what no mortal being could possibly withstand: program in brainfuck.
Painful as it was, I read most of the book just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. The truth is that he hasn't had a useful idea in the past 15 years. The rest of it is either just wanking, like his speculations on how the laws of physics could be generated by a CA - pure speculation with no way of using his ideas to solve any real problems. Other times he's just plain wrong, such as his idea that natural selection is not the cause of life complexity.
His reasoning is pretty flimsy going something like this:
I'm going to be sick. I'm glad I returned it, and please don't get me started on the notes!
Here's the overriding truth of worldviews and metaphors: For at least the past five hudnred years, we in the West have taken the dominant mode of industry and "explained" both human consciousness and the Godhood in terms of it.
First, of course, industry was agriculture... and God was basically a farmer, creating and tilling the Earth, making it ripe.
Then we came upon clockworks. (Too many miss the deep pyschological impact that the idea of time-keeping had upon the world.) Nice orderly systems that run more or less regularly, mimicking the order seen in, say, the motion of planets. And here, of course, God is the ultimate watchmaker.
The Age of Steam comes next and now God is the ultimate civil enginner. The Universe is a vast and complicated -- but ultimately comprehensible -- machine. It's made of discrete little bits that fall into recognizable types. If we understand the types and how they interact, we can reverse-engineer the machine.
Now we're in the Age of Information. The rising dominant archetype is the digital computer, revolutionizing our world the way that the steam engine did the 1700s. It almost goes without saying that of course some people are going to see digital computers in everything -- even the deepest bits of the Universe -- and so of course someone is going to claim God is the ultimate software engineer.
My impression is that these metaphors reveal less about God than they do about us... we don't come any closer to understanding God through them, but we might -- if we pay attention -- come closer to understanding how we understand ourselves.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Newton modest!!! Perhaps you unaware of how he treated other scientists of his era. Look into his treatment of Flamsteed, Leibnitz, or Hooke sometime. The 'shoulders of giants' quote was a dig at the small statured Hooke.
Einstien? The guy who as part of his divorce settlement gave his ex the winnings from his not yet awarded Nobel prize modest?
Don't know about Feynman ...
As to the technology bit, what technology did Newton give us? Maxwell? Einstein? Galilleo? Feynman? Darwin? Euler? [your favorite here ...]
Note I didn't ask what technology did their discoveries give rise to, but what technology did they themselves develop? (And to make my point perfectly clear, not all scientists are inventors. I am perfectly aware that some are.)
Wolfram sounds like a lot of scientists. He also sounds like a lot of crackpots. His track record should at least get him a hearing. And he should be judged on his ideas. Not on his personality nor his treatment of others.
One final thought. Wolfram's modus operandi is at least superficially similar to Newton's. Both worked alone. Both were dismissive of those whose work came before them. And at least one changed the scientific worldview big time.
Steve M
Einstein's theories of relativity that combine the above, are more accurate and elegant (i.e. conceptually simpler) than the two. But the more accurate predictions do not mean that the model is any closer to the 'real' workings of nature.
Wolfram's model may be even more accurate, but there can never be a conclusive proof if it really reflects the reality.
I remember a lecture by Benoit Mandelbrot I attended a few years ago. He showed the exactly same idea as Wolfram is explaining, that starting from very simple algorithms you could iterate many natural patterns. What really struck me was Mandelbrot's note on the idea of patterns themselves: "Are there patterns out there in nature, or are the patterns only in our heads?"
The latter possibility comes back to what you've explained, that the model tells more about the current society, than it does about nature. Of course, the question looks like it can never really be answered.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO COMMENT if all you've read are the reviews. So please shut up until you read the book.
For only $45 from Amazon, A New Kind of Science is physically one of the best deals I've ever seen in a book. Its size is enormous (well over 1200 pages), and the quality of the paper, binding and printing process is extremely excellent, because the high resolution illustrations required it.
"Many of the pictures in this book have a rather different character from things that are normally printed. For unlike traditional diagrams consisting of separate visible elements -- or photographs involving smooth gradiations of color -- they often for example contain hundreds of cells per inch, each in effect independently black of white. And to capure this properly required careful sheet-fed printing on paper smooth enough to avoid significant spreading of ink." ... "The book was printed on 50-pound Finch VHF paper on a sheet-fed press. It was imaged directly to plates at 2400 dpi, with halftones rendered using a 175-line screen with round dots angled at 45 degrees. The binding was Smythe sewn."
Even if you never read this book and only use it as a paper weight or prop to pick up girls, it's still the highest quality paper weight or chick magnet you'll ever find for the money. If Springer-Verlag had published A New Kind of Science, it would probably cost at least $250, be printed on cheap K-Mart toilet paper, and they wouldn't have even considered putting a fresh ribbon in the typewriter.
If you do bother reading the book before trying to write a review or refute its contents by personally attacking the author, it will certainly change your view of the universe.
-Don
PS: Here's a dynamic cellular automata snowflake generator that I wrote a while ago, inspired by Margolis and Toffoli's "Cellular Automata Machines: A New Environment for Modeling" [MIT Press, 1987]:
AethOTron: http://www.DonHopkins.com/AethOTron
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
So have you ever heard of a widely-used product called MATHEMATICA?
Open the URL http://www.mathematica.com, notice where it redirects you to, learn about it, and see how laughably wrong and totally off-base you are in your accusations that Wolfram doesn't understand math.
Krapangor, I find it impossible to believe that you know much about math yourself, if you've never heard of Mathematica. But for you to say that Wolfram doesn't understand math -- that takes the cake! Ha ha ha!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
That's not a problem with peer-review per se, though. Surely that's more of a problem with the way funding is assessed? If you're rich enough not to worry about funding you could presumably do some work without publishing loads of papers, and then get it peer-reviewed.
This post is strictly my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.
Actually Steve was not really a physicist per se, he was a mathematician/computer geek type who happened to hang out with physicists and dabble in their field while making use of the ludicrously lavish resources that particle physicists have access to. He was at the Rutherford labs about five years before I worked with the people there in the same sort of semi-detached role.
In developing Mathematica Steve pretty much worked the field of mathematics. To call him 'only a physicist' sounds to me like someone trying desperately to promote themselves by putting others down.
Where people can legitimately ask what Wolfram has been playing at is his stweardship of Wolfram Research these past ten years. Back in 1994 a whole new version of Mathematica came out that was very close to being a Web browser. I talked to him about something in that line, he got al excited and... nothing happened. It is clear now that he missed the Internet explosion while he was writing the damned book.
Where Wolfram Research is really vulnerable is the ridiculous cost of their product. If you thin MSFT price gouges compare the price of Excel and Mathematica. If someone coulf work out a way to graft SMP functionality into a spreadsheet style interface they could take Wolfram Research appart.
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"Arguably better" how? The "team of PhDs" were Wolfram's employees, and beholden to him. Real peer review means independent peer review, sans the conflict of interest inherent in checking the boss' work....
... review his work and check it in minute detail for accuracy, I would submit that, while such is possible, it is extremely unlikely and would be incredibly self-defeating (as he would then open himself up widely to public ridicule once his unchecked work was published).
Because one of the real weaknesses in the current scientific establishment is the orthodoxy that often plagues scientific publications, in which 'peer review' often amounts to a single colleague, sometimes for reasons more personal and political than scientific, prevents a work from ever seeing the wider light of day.
Peer review doesn't necessarilly have to occur prior to publication. Indeed, it is arguably better that work be published widely, and then either vindicated or rebutted publicly, rather than this happening in the quiet of a magazine's editorial office. That too is peer review (public acceptance or condemnation of a work, public vindiciaton or rebutting of its arguments, data, and/or interpretation), and that is precisely what Wolfram's work will be subjected to, now that it has been published.
It will either stand or fall on its own merits. Wolfram's team of PhDs provided sanity checks on his work, and as I understand it were given fairly wide latitude in pointing out any errors or inconsitencies that might have arisen. That is typically what the purpose of peer review prior to publication is supposed to accomplish, to insure that the work not have any glaring and emberrassing errors prior to publication.
Unfortunately it is often used as a means of enforcing orthodoxy, which is inappropriate and antithetical to what science is supposed to be about. History is repleat with scientific work that went unpublished for years, until the scientific orthodoxy in the discipline shifted and the work suddenly became "acceptable," despite having been chanced or "corrected" in no way whatsoever. Wolfram wisely avoided this nonsense entirely, and whether his theories turn out to be correct or not, they are sufficiently revolutionary that his approach was probably quite justified.
As for the insinuation that Wolfram would pressure his people not to do what he hired them to do
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy