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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.
He uses a classification of 256 particular 2D autometa for a lot of the examples in the book that's kind of interesting. I took the time to write some code for it to explore the various permutations. It's CGI-based and it generates a png or jpeg image, so just throw it in your cgi-bin and check it out. The comments list the various options you can send it.
Yes, that's just it. I've read here and there in ANKOS and its absolutely fascinating, but is it science, or mathematics?
If we define science in terms of observation and experiment, leading to theory, and then back to observation, does the "behavior" of a machine deserve to be included?
If the book were titled "A new kind of mathematics (with scientific implications)" perhaps that would be more accurate?
Where exactly is the science in ANKOS?
Of course if it is really a NEW kind of science, perhaps we don't need observation of "real world" phenomena. But I'm troubled by that meaning of science.
Wolfram's book is a very long slog. For inspiration to keep the appetite whetted have a look at Barabasi's - Linked: The New Science of Networks (http://www.nd.edu/~networks/linked/). The nice thing is you can also look at some of his papers in peer reviewed journals at http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs where you can see that he has been cited in the works of others. It may give you a better feel for the merit of Wolfram's tome by comparing his work to that of a peer-reviewed colleague.
"It's too bad that more science isn't delivered this way."
Written by S. Wolfram,
Peer reviewed by noone,
Edited by S. Wolfram,
Published by S. Wolfram's company.
That's not the best route for 'science' to take in its delivery.
Having said that, I think one comment that seems to be applicable is the ancient "both new and interesting; that which is interesting isn't new, and that which is new isn't interesting" style quote. He's very bad ad giving credit to those who did so much before he was even in nappies.
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
He is one of those rare individuals that consistantly produce.
Uhh, I hate to disagree with you but how is going into hiding to write a book "producing"? When a person is risen to the level of celebrity scientist, they are going to get press when they want it, no matter what they say. He is neither the first person to marvel at CA's and while cool, we have yet to see whether his ideas are truely significant or not.
-Sean
There are, generally speaking, two kinds of science.
Some sciences are descriptive and others are predictive. Physics is the ultimate in predictive science where temendously precise pridictions
about interactions can be calculated in advance. But there's a limit to what we can reasonably calculate. Many problems, like a Newtonian
3-body problem, have no closed solution and require numeric approximations to calculate anything. Other problems exhibit sensitivity to initial conditions and result in chaotic behavior. Precise predictions are no longer possible.
Other sciences are descriptive. They attempt to classify and organize observations into meaningful systems. Cladistics, pre-Darwin, described anatomical similarities between known species. Eventually, the resulting family arrangements were understood as evidence of underlying evolutionary processes whereby closely related species were
only recetly divergent and species with greater differences were less closely related.
Wolfram offers us a little of both in A New Kind of Science (which I have bought, browsed, but not yet read in depth). Only time will tell
if the systems he's calaloged will pay off in other disciplines. It may very well be that, once we know what to look for, natural analogues
of his systems may be all around us waiting to be discovered.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Written by S. Wolfram,
... we'll just have to wait and see.
... he is trying to drive a point home, and (thus far, I've only made it through chapter 7) is doing so in a time honored, rigorous fashion that is reminiscent of just about every theoretical mathematics, physics and engineering course I've taken.
Peer reviewed by noone,
Edited by S. Wolfram,
Published by S. Wolfram's company.
Well, Wolfram had a team of PhDs working under him, so it did go through some nomimal review and quite a rigorous check for accuracy. That is certainly comparable to the "peer review" that one sees in publishing scientific papers in scientific journals, and is arguably better than much of the "peer review" that takes place prior to such publications.
The real "peer review" will be that of other scientists now that his work is published. Can they replicate his results (almost certainly) and do the applications he outlined produce useful results to those working in the various fields of scientific inquiry his book touches upon. Quite possibly
I'm reading his book now, and it is quite fascinating. I disagree with the various calls for editors others have been making
Does that mean his conclusions are correct? No.
But it does set a very solid foundation for his thesis, and allow one to regard his theories in a solid context and an informed way, and, what is more, to understand them without first having become an expert in the field of CA.
He thinks he's discovered an overlooked tool for doing scientific analasys of systems which to date have defied calculus and other methods of analysis. He makes a compelling argument for why this is so, and provides ample data and information for anyone who is interested to duplicate and check his work.
He may not be correct, and his method of publishing may not have been within the channels the establishment generally prefers, but his publication itself appears to be in no way lacking in scientific rigorousness, and has certainly provided the detail and wherewithall for anyone to challenge it.
He may not be paying proper homage to those who came before him, or giving sufficient credit to those who have thought along similar lines (though he does cite other works and give due credit, so I'm not sure that criticism is even accurate), but his work, right or wrong, certainly appears scientifically valid. And if it is wrong, it will be rebutted quite thoroughly I'm sure, given the number of toes he has likely stepped on in persuing such a nontraditional course.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Which is a system functioning in a separate technology realm from industry and invention. I can't directly site the MIT study, but the result is effectively (my analogy) what's seen in child-development. Before the development of a set of social / communication skills small children will play adjacent to each other and rarely interact.
Neither of these systems (academia / industry) in practice holds the other in particularly high regard. In fact a small fraction (ca 1-5%) of engineers / scientists stay current with what's happening in 'that other area', these individuals, termed 'gatekeepers' are repsonsible for nearly all technology transfer.
the scientific system excludes certain types of claims ... it logically runs the risk of excluding the bona fide true revolutionary.... Yet in truth it does not seem to do that all that often.
I guess it depends on what you consider 'often' and 'revolutionary'. Lynn Margulis's discovery that Eukaryotic (all higher order life) cells resulted from the symbiotic relationship between prokariotic cells and viruses was actively derided in biology for a decade.
Scientists who choose not to live in the arena of academia, or corporate R&D are often the innovators who bring the most real innovations to light.
Examples:
- James Lovelock (inventor of gas-chromatograph tools, responsible for Gaia hypothesis and warning of te HCFC / Ozone problem)
- Itzak Bentov (one of 2 principal inventors of angioplasty and related less-invasive medicine one of the founders of Boston Scientific (now $2B+ sales)
- Stephen Wolfram
The common theme among these individuals is that they pursued new work in part outside of established doctrine, and to some extent this was precisely possible becuase they worked outside of 'peer review'Lovelock observed in his original book about Gaia that some kinds of research will never be taken on in academia (or the results of completed work will be rejected) because of purely social considerations. He cites the mis-evaluated concerns for safety in nuclear energy, comparing it to the actual (larger) magnitude of toxic chemical contamination risks.
For a similar example read (or google for) "Brain Sex", a summary of research documenting differences in male and female brain structure. Researchers in this field have uniformly found that because it is not 'PC' to observe that male and female cognigtion / brain structure exhibit meaningful differences, their (almost certainly valid) works are very slow to be funded or accepted.
These individuals and fields demonstrate how sometimes truly groundbreaking work can only happen outside of the established context. In these instances and many similar ones this happens when an individual can fund his(her) own work and therefor work outside of the peer review system of science.
Einstein's theories were nothing short of the demolition of... Newtonian worldview
Actually, Poincare noted the implications of both Relativity and Quantum Mechanics a couple of decades before Einstein applied the mathmatics necessary to fully illuminate the problem.
'Science' often believes the myth that it is an objective undertaking, not subject to whim or 'current fashion'. Most people who work very long in scientific fields discover that there are (wrong) articles of faith which become codified in 'the literature'. In fact 'Science' is a very human endeavour.
If peer review and scientific method alone were sufficient to accomplish all new work the examples above would not be true. They may be the exception, however they are clearly (IMHO) important exceptions.
Whether through introducing new understandings which would have otherwise been missed or effectively bringing new ideas and tools into the marketplace / policy, these are examples of where 'Science' as an institution comes up short.
None of which, by the way is intended to deny the validity of the various methods. 'Science' progresses through combinations of insight and hard work. Whether the hard work part is practiced to adhere to the rigors of peer review, or to bring an genuinely new idea to market in a form that works, the process is similar.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD