|
Author
|
Topic: Wolfram's New Kind of Science
|
Michael M. Halassa
Member
Member # 625
|
posted 13. February 2003 09:46
Hi, I am a new member to this society. I am also new to the science of complexity. I have been reading Dr. Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science and wanted to know what other members thought of it. How revolutionary is that kind of science?
IP: Logged
|
|
Rex Kerr
Member
Member # 632
|
posted 14. February 2003 14:54
It is certainly different. People have tinkered with cellular automata, Turing machines, and the like before. However, to my knowledge nobody has previously undertaken this type of exhaustive study--trying not just one Turing machine, but every possible Turing machine of a certain size.
I am not completely shocked by the results, but neither would I have expected them. There is much less long-term predictability than you would expect. Put another way, simple computations in a mathematical (arithmetic) ruleset fail to help you understand the long-term behavior of very many other very simple rulesets.
Whether it turns out to be revolutionary remains, I think, to be seen. (Likewise, whether it has any relevance to ID remains to be seen.)
IP: Logged
|
|
gedanken
Member
Member # 594
|
posted 14. February 2003 20:14
Remember in the old days that “computers” were groups of people who followed algorithms to produce mathematical results? Also the so-called “analytic” functions (like sine, exp) are actually calculated by “algorithms” (probably done for original printed tables by rooms of “computers”). And how does one multiply? Is that not really an “algorithm”? We think of the elementary mathematical functions as though the existed out in space, rather than in the minds of humans who create them through organized sequences of steps.
Calculate the volume or mass of water that fills a sphere, or a measured surface pattern. Can that be done without algorithms? Event the most rudimentary of measurement relationships are based on algorithms.
So the idea that the laws of reality might need algorithms for their prediction is really neither new nor revolutionary. Nor is it something that many of us would disagree with, so I’m not convinced that his claims are controversial. (I haven’t read the book, so I’m only basing what I say on hearsay.)
Now we discover that to predict the path of a rock in space requires an “algorithm” -- and thus algorithms are found to pervade nature. Now there are basic philosophical arguments for things like anthropic principle, based on observation of nature combined with some philosophical assumptions. But that we find algorithms pervading nature (in the sense that they are required to predict nature) is not an indication of greater involvement of intelligence in creation of biological forms than it is an argument that intelligence is needed for rocks to follow their paths in the heavens. The motion of objects in the heavens also has an origin of being viewed as designed by an intelligence.
What I find fascinating is the concept that intelligence comes from nature. That in turn we might feel that nature comes from an intelligence is not unexpected, nor can any science deny this. It is the claim that parts of nature are not a result of intelligence -- that distinctions can be made between the parts that are and the parts that are not, that I find perplexing.
[ 14. February 2003, 20:21: Message edited by: gedanken ]
IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic