A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram (PDF)

Description

This long-awaited work from one of the world’s most respected scientists presents a series of dramatic discoveries never before made public. Starting from a collection of simple computer experiments–illustrated in the book by striking computer graphics–Stephen Wolfram shows us how their unexpected results force a whole new way of looking at the operation of our universe. Wolfram uses his approach to tackle a remarkable array of fundamental problems in science, from the origins of apparent randomness in physical systems, to the development of complexity in biology, the ultimate scope and limitations of mathematics, the possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, the interplay between free will and determinism and the character of intelligence in the universe. Written with exceptional clarity, and illustrated by nearly a thousand original pictures, this seminal book allows scientists and non-scientists alike to participate in what promises to be a major intellectual revolution.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐There are a vast range of physical, biological, and other systems that we are confronted with that exhibit an immense complexity. Throughout history, it has been seen as perhaps the work of a supernatural being. Also, often when we encounter something that seems complex, we take it for granted that the phenomenon must be the result of an underlying mechanism that is itself complex. The author shows us how simple programs can, in fact, produce great complexity. In regards to physics, the author states, “that thinking in terms of simple programs will make it possible to construct a single truly fundamental theory of physics, from which space, time, quantum mechanics and all the other known feature of our universe will emerge.” We learn in this book, through virtually hundreds of pages of diagrams, how simple initial conditions can produce complex behavior. Wolfram argues that this phenomenon is responsible from most of the complexity we see in nature.There is extensive discussion of cellular automata, where we have simple rules that result in complex behavior- so much in fact that I skipped through some of the material. It is believed that these behaviors are common in nature. An interesting finding is that “adding more complexity to the underlying rules does not yield behavior that it ultimately any more complex.” By chapter four, we are introduced to systems based on numbers. How does their behavior compare with other systems discussed? Even here it is possible to get behavior of considerable complexity by applying a series of operations based on simple arithmetic. Chapter 5 expands things to two dimension and beyond. The next chapter considers completely random initial conditions.Finally, we get to the application of what was covered in the previous chapters – the study of actual phenomena in nature. There seems to be a similarity between the basic mechanisms in nature and those responsible for the phenomena seen in simple programs. It is important to note that even though the models are based on simple programs that may successfully reproduce the behavior of some system even though that system does not actually consist of discrete cells, it is just a model. Models provide “an abstract representation of effects that are important in determining the behavior of a system.” The author provides examples of snowflake formation and fluidic motion. Regarding evolution, it seems that natural selection may not be as important as once thought saying that features in complexity of biological organisms arise in a sense not because of natural selection but despite it. Also, it was noted that the high degree of complexity seen in nature “can arise in a sense quite effortlessly just as a consequence of following certain simple rules of growth.”In the chapter on physics, this idea of simple initial conditions producing complex and seemingly random behavior is applied to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The author discusses models for continuum fluid mechanics and even the universe. In fact, he believes that most physical laws discovered so far “are not truly fundamental but are emergent features of the large-scale behavior of some ultimate underlying rules.” The discussion veers into topics like gravity, spacetime, and quantum phenomena. It is the author’s “strong belief that in the end it will turn out that every detail of our universe does indeed follow rules that can be represented by a very simple program – and that everything we see will ultimately emerge just from running this program.” Wow, the thought went through my head: could we be living in a simulation? Who knows?The next chapter deals with process of perception and analysis. I skimmed through parts of this section – a bit too much detail for me. But the question becomes could simple mechanisms underlie human thinking? The next chapter covers universality and how “in the end cellular automata can actually be made to emulate almost every single type of system” that has been discussed so far. In fact, a wide range of computations that can be performed by computers can be done by cellular automata.In the final chapter, the author discusses something called the Principle of Computational Equivalence, where one can view all processes whether produced by humans or nature as computations. Another concept discussed is computational irreducibility, which implies that even if one has all the information to work out how some system will behave, it will still take an irreducible amount of computational work to do this. The concepts developed here apply not only to phenomena in nature but can provide new insights on fundamental issues in mathematics as well. Note that in discussing his work, the author supplies literally hundreds of charts, diagrams, and tables to back up his claims. The author concludes the main purpose of the book has been to build a new kind of basic science, but the most important consequence will have been to introduce a vast new range of systems helpful to technology.

⭐I have just skimmed a few pages here and there in A New Kind of Science. I bought it because Stephen Wolfram is almost as brilliant as he would have you believe he is if you have read some of the promo material about him that has appeared on Wolfram Research’s main page.I used to use Mathematica years ago, when it was no longer amazing and trendy, but just a very accepted software tool college and grad students were expected to use in conjunction with many of their science, math and engineering classes. I never had to use it for a class or work, but it was often available for free or cheap when I was a grad student or F/T employee on campus so I got to like it because it was interesting and fun to use as a way to explore some “hobby” math problems.This book is not one I expect to read cover to cover, but I would be surprised if I do not read large sections of it, with a few days of binge reading per section. After I had much parts of Ch1 and Ch2 when I had access to someone else’s copy of the book a couple of years ago, I realized that Wolfram’s notions regarding intuition as being a key to really understanding science [and math, by implication] are much more explicitly stated than how I have described what took me several years of my life to figure out.Looking at other chapters later in the book, I expect I will dive into sections mentioning or covering subject matter that has fascinated me for some reason in the past, just because I have a hunch that what Wolfram writes about it might save me a lot of time learning some basics that I might not pick up in more years of very casual reading about that or similar topics.Douglas R. Hostadter is mentioned in the index of A New Kind of Science [hereinafter: ANKoS] as he is referenced when recursive sequenced are discussed in this book. As a reader who found Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (*) to be a life-changing book in the late 1970s when it was first published, I think books such as ANKoS are likely to be a way to keep expanding my knowledge of areas of science and math I enjoy without having to read several in-depth books covering those fields of study.My S.W.A.G is that ANKos will be useful as a tour guide to topics in math and science I would like to learn more about, written by a guide who looks at different things and observes their mathematical and conceptual similarities or other relationships.Sorry for the rather vague limited “first impression” done with a very broad brush, but people who will like this book for the reasons I am glad I already bought it (no, not cognitive dissonance! 🙂 might well want to risk $15 on a book that could enable them to continue studying certain subjects where the typical book price might be upwards of $40 and know enough to select just a few very appropriate titles.In short if glancing through ANKoS for subjects that look interesting and maybe reading the first chapter or two to see if the style and manner of presentation work for you, makes you want to delve deeper into some of those subjects, ANKoS might be an excellent place to start.Now I want to pick up a current edition of Mathematica, but unlike this book, that is not cheap if one does not have a university or corporate affiliation which makes it free or very affordable.Regards,TMG* ( https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567 )

⭐20 years in the making & revolutionary ? he is having a giraffe. First I thought he was telling the story of Lorenz in the first few pages and then going onto the lorenz attractor, chaos theory and Poincare sections etc …. but no … it is all about himself, a self-obsession he exhibits on every page, and his supposedly startling, earth-shattering observations that he fails to appreciate have been observed by many others before and presented in more detail, are nothing of the sort and in the intervening time has not had any impact. Detail is sadly lacking in this tome with its extra wide margins and large font. He then compares the book ( his work ) to Newton’s work as a new science, and raises an idea that he says he finally suppressed, which was the need to invent a whole new technical framework & lexicon to explain these monumental concepts. Was he on the lash or on ego building supplements ?? It has been 17 odd years since this book came out and there’s nothing in the book beyond Barnsley’s ‘Iterated function system’ book presentation or Conway’s game of life and cellular automata. The book is very light on technical detail and high on self-opinion at the very least.

⭐This book was written by Dr Wolfram is clever in ways that I will never be. Therefore, I was willing to be open to new idea, despite the scepticism of others. He starts with automata, where a new element is a combination of previous elements – The Game Of Life is a well-known example of this. There are some very interesting outcomes from this, and it would have been nice if he had continued with this theme. He does some work with Turing machines – I would have welcomed more.Unfortunately, Dr Wolfram had other notions. He believes, without any evidence that I could detect, that these automata could be used to model scientific behaviour. An example given was snowflakes, and he showed a automata model of a snowflake at different stages in growth. He claimed that regular science cannot explain snowflakes, which is untrue. What regular science can explain is the way in which temperature and humidity interact to deliver the diverse forms of snowflake. All that his automata can do is make a hexagonal shape, on a hexagonal grid. It predicts nothing, and is therefore worthless.Dr Wolfram does a presentation about relativity and quantum mechanics. This is worse than the snowflake example. It is page after page of utter nonsense.Overall, the impression is of a bloated book, which could say more in fewer pages if it was properly edited. The automata are genuinely interesting – the remainder is just nonsense, and could have been omitted.

⭐* PhysicalThis book is over 1201 pages. It’s a door stop of a book. The paper is very good quality and it’s printed very well.* Target Audience: A-Level, H.N.D, Undergraduate, Graduate, Post Graduate, Masters?It’s open to a widespread A-level to Graduate.* Whats does it cover?1. the Foundation for a New Kind of Science, 2. The Crucial Experiment, 3. the World of Simple Programs, 4. System based on Numbers, 5. Two Dimensional and Beyond. 6. Starting from Randomness, 7. Mechanisms in Programs and Nature, 8. Implications for Everyday Systems, 9. Fundamental Physics, 10 Processes of Perception and Analysis,11 the Notion of Computation, 12. the Principle of Computational Equivalence, Notes index* What are the best bits?This book on its own is an examination of how simple programs can generate complex data. It is needed to remember that these simple methods are fields in, Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Social Sciences, Computer Science, Philosophy, Art, Technology, A.I, Artificial life, Catsrophe, Chaos theory, Complexity theory, Computational Complexity Theory, Cybernetics, Dynamic Systems, Theory, Evolution Theory, Experimental Mathematics, Fractals Geometry, General system Theory, Nano Technology, Nonlinear Dynamics, Scientific Computing, Self Organisation, Statistical Mechanics.The book is very detailed explorations of subtle changes to simple programs and data is catalogued systematically to help organise the resulting fields of results and are reapplied to the next generations of programs. It’s a lot of stuff. His style is chatty as if he’s there with you explaining the results to you. The message is to organise your results and build on them. You could cut 25% of the chatty style and still wouldn’t have harmed the structure.* SummaryIt’s an education in that the simpler the program, the wider the potential useability of what’s shown.

⭐As an initial reaction, perhaps ‘Wow!’ is the applicable expression! Mr. Wolfram has a respected and productive history in the field of computer science; his primary accolade being the powerful ‘Mathmatica’ suite of symbolic software tools used ubiquitously in the science and engineering fields. But he hasn’t stopped there: this book describes how these tools – each of which is a functional sub-routine – can be combined and manipulated in such ways as if they were (almost) primary source code for building complex algorithmic entities – aka ‘Cellular Automata’ – applicable to almost every field of human endeavour. Thus is born the ‘Wolfram’ language for knowledge-based programming, using which may reveal useful, hitherto undiscovered relationships and interactions between systems and processes. in my estimation, this will revolutionise the way in which research and development is undertaken – and not just in the physical sciences – gaining huge benefits in costs, time and effort. This is truly a conceptual and intellectual ‘amplifier’ which will surely figure as being of immense significance in our increasing drive to unravel the mysteries of nature. The writing style is pacy and bright, giving full credit to the lay reader who may not have sufficient knowledge or experience in computer science or physics. It is not a laborious read, but Mr. Wolfram does, however, tediously tend to blow his own trumpet at every opportunity – obviously holding great pride in own theories and achievements! Having said that, it is in no way a detraction of the book or the man; I applaud him for what he has achieved and for presenting it to the world with articulate and informal narrative.

⭐Verbose, over long, repetitive, insufferably arrogant and plagiaristic this book is (see other reviews), it does have one big advantage – It contains a wealth of information on cellular automata. I’m a quarter of the way through so far. I imagine it will ultimately reward a non specialist in the field like myself at the cost of many hours of my life.No doubt the book completely annoys the pants off industry practitioners who, reading this book, one would think barely exist compared to the self-professed awesome brain of Mr Wolfram. At times, it almost falls into parody as if an intelligent version of Arnold Rimmer for Red Dwarf was writing it. As an 11-year old, I remember programming Conway’s Game of Life and, like many other kids who did this, being fascinated by where the hell the information to describe all this comes from. But according to Mr. Wolfram, he was the first one to think like this. Forget about all the teenage Game of Life hobbyists out there, Zuse, Tegmark etc. Perhaps its true that Wolfram did independently come up with lots of discoveries and helped reinvigorate the subject, but even if he did, he should acknowledge others more in his writing and not boast about what a clever chappy he is the whole time. It’s my first book in digital physics, so can’t compare it to others out there, unfortunately.

Keywords

Free Download A New Kind of Science in PDF format
A New Kind of Science PDF Free Download
Download A New Kind of Science 2016 PDF Free
A New Kind of Science 2016 PDF Free Download
Download A New Kind of Science PDF
Free Download Ebook A New Kind of Science