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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.
"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