From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Sun Jun 16 2002 - 17:21:41 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote
> While some people seem amazed at Wolfram's new book promoting
> a new kind of science, some scientists don't see anything new in
> the book. They say that it is a collection of current ideas already
> being investigated by mainstream science. They claim that by
> remaining a recluse and working on his manifesto in solitude,
> Wolfram has been out of the loop of mainstream science.
> They say he has reinvented the wheel and is
> proposing theories that mainstream science has already proposed.
> (Has anybody looked at Wolfram's book yet?)
I'm waiting on it and looking forward to it. You're right - the
general science community seems unimpressed.
I seem to remember (1970's?) people started (more generally) doing
mathematical
proofs that consisted of pure numerical set exhaustion . The results of
science became, in effect, a computer output. The general community
when through a phase of discomfort - 'how can this be a real proof?'.
The process challenged the long held reliance on separable, algorithmic
a-priori equations as solutions. Somehow the computational proof seemed
less valid, and yet no-one could mount an argument that, indeed,
these were not proofs. A sqirming discomfort seemed to pervade the various
dsciplines.
Wolframs idea seems to be an extrapolation of this form of computational
'proof' and, I think, is saying that it is the only way that real
progress will be made is to truly lose the remaining belief in the
formulaic proof, where we see the formulaic proof as a special case
in a more generalised computational regime, or perhaps a way of
extracting general properties from a complex computational regime.
Imagine an inverse world where to do science you get out your CA box and
where
formal (algebraic/calculus) mathematics is an optional extra summarisation
module
for describing, in a more general or idealised way, what is going on at
different physical/temporal scales. A child educated from this reverse
standpoint
would have a quite different view of things. Good or bad? Remains to be
seen.
"The 5th grade child of the future speaks into the computer on her wrist.
It assembles a visual calculator from it's cellular automaton seeds
and displays the 12 times table".
I think that's what Wolfram's distilled whilst locked away in his attic
for a decade. Then again, he could be suffering the delusions of the
isolated
obsessive.
Colin Hales
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