LogicMania

Has anyone heard of or has read "A New Kind of Science" compiled by Stephen Wolfram? I haven't had the chance to read on it but I was just wondering about anyone's opinions on the book. Here's the website: <a href="http://www.wolframscience.com/preview/" target="_blank">http://www.wolframscience.com/preview/</a>

Skydancer

Hmm. He seems to have triggered several of the Psychoceramic Warning Alerts just in the first page. (Including the claim of vast new applicability, use of irrelevent titles - LLC is the real-estate dealers license, if I'm not mistaken - and bringing up the amount of time he's spent doing this....) Besides, all he's really doing is reworking some elementary chaos mathematics and tesellation theory and claiming it's a new science. The boy's out to lunch.

[ May 24, 2002: Message edited by: Skydancer ]</p>

Corwin

Haven't checked the site, probably won't bother. Just wanted to mention that LLC is Limited Liability Corporation. It's been replacing Inc for some years now. (It provides more protection for the board of directors and the shareholders.)

LogicMania

From what I have read he claims to have broken ties with the traditional mathematics that science has always relied on to describe nature and is using computations to describe his systems. I do not understand complexity theory so I cannot fully appreciate what his findings may mean. How has his claim of applicability triggered Psychoceramic Warning Alerts? What are Psychoceramic Warning Alerts? I'm lost.

lpetrich

"Psychoceramic" is a whimsical term for crackpot.

Something like the term "fissured ceramics", which Carl Sagan's letter-readers had applied to some of the mail that he had gotten.

LogicMania

Here's an interesting review of "A New Kind of Science" by Ray Kurzweil: <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0464.html?printable=1" target="_blank">http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0464.html?printable=1</a>

AdamWho

Anytime a person states to have "a new science" then they are highly suspect for being a crank. I have a book call "The new gravity" that is VERY Cranky.

<a href="http://www.crank.net" target="_blank">Here is a site about cranks</a>

Even nobel prize winners have been guilt of crankiness, so watch out for the argument from authority.

ohwilleke

First off, LLC isn't a title, it's a form of business organization which stands for limited liability company. The presence of LLC affixed to the author's name probably means only that he is trying to split royalty checks with his kids to reduce his estate and income tax liability.

Secondly, sounds like old news to me. I took a course in fractals that included most of the key concepts in this book in 1990 or 1991. Chaotic systems are interesting. They have use. One narrow subset of them and a lot of mathematica pictures are no big deal, however.

lpetrich

"Limited liability company" is nothing new -- it's just using that in the company's name that is relatively recent. A common variant is "public limited company".

jayh

I think that is a bit dismissive. There has been a lot of development going on in that field in 10 years. Wolfram is somewhat eccentric but has enough history of thoroughness and real acheivement to be worth consideration (his exchanges with SJ Gould show how his perceptions have successfully stepped on other toes)

Interesting article by Steven Levy (author of Crypto):
<a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/wolfram.html" target="_blank">http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/wolfram.html</a>

j