Wolfram's "New Kind of Science"

The Kindle preview of "A New Kind of Science" is very generous - over 100 pages. Definitely enough to give an overall flavor of the book. The hard copy of the book is virtually unreadable due to tiny text fonts. The Kindle version is very affordable compared to the $40 cost (down from $70) of the phone-book sized original.

I would normally not review a book I have not read from cover to cover, but a good friend presented this book to me as one of the most interesting in his collection. For the sake of discussion, I felt the need to dive in.

I didn't find the first 100 pages to be particularly difficult to understand, but there wasn't much that I found interesting or original. My impression was that the next 700 pages would milk the basic cellular automaton idea (not original with Wolfram) to construct "original" ways of looking at virtually everything, allowing Wolfram to insert himself as offering the key insight - the turning point - in virtually every field of knowledge. This his explicit claim in the first chapter and it's made not in the name of this "new science" but on behalf of Wolfram himself.

Wolfram places himself at the center of focus, mentioning his own unique insight and achievements in virtually every paragraph. Whatever his discoveries may be, by drawing the spotlight to himself, he forces the reader to draw conclusions about Wolfram as a person. He does not present himself as an honest or reliable guide to his subject. "Unreliability" may go as far as to question his sanity.

He is a clear example of a Narcissistic personality (one of the many things we find alarming in Trump). He consistently underplays and dismisses the work of others and praises his own "discoveries" with laughable hyperbole.  Again and again, we see that what is amazing to Wolfram is his own genius. It's not difficult to compare his "genius" to a parallel work of Mandelbrot. Nobody could fail to be astonished by a deep dive into a Mandelbrot set, but when Mandelbrot himself discusses this phenomenon (much more interesting than Wolfram's examples), he explains it clearly and moves on to other fundamental issues. I may have missed it, but Wolfram Alpha seems to be the perfect tool for visualizing Mandelbrot sets, yet Wolfram doesn't mention Mandelbrot in his "origin story" of his "new science".

One quick check of his supposed "revolution" in biology may be obtained by Googling "Computational Biology" - a thriving field that's the explicit focus of many University departments. The Wikipedia article on this subject does not mention Wolfram. Yet, to read the book, nothing is going on here except for Wolfram's Nobel-class work on cellular automata (a field he did not invent). Complexity arising from simple formulae is not new - the field is called "Chaos Theory". If one read Wolfram's book in isolation, one would get the impression that Wolfram has more or less invented these fields (or at least "revolutionized" them). Outside of Wolfram's own mind, this seminal influence is hard to find. 

The other thing I note is "manic syndrome". His feeling that everything in the Universe depends on "laws" he has discovered is classic mania. Everything is connected to everything else and only he can see the connections. The massive size of the book, the tiny fonts, the endless examples of fascinating patterns all speak of a manic frame of mind. I would be very surprised if Wolfram has not been under psychiatric care from time to time. This would not conflict with his obvious business success and real achievement (such as Mathematica). Insights gained on manic "trips" can actually be totally valid. It's the affective aspect of it (the illusion of cosmic significance) that creates problems in daily life and eventually the need for treatment. The manic (paranoid) illusion that only you can see the truth is evident on every page of this book.

Narcissism and mania grow in the same soil as psychosis - living in a fantasy world that is detached from what the rest of us call "reality". Wolfram's ranting, rambling style reminds me of nothing better than I have seen on the psych ward. Another way of saying this is that Wolfram seems to be "lost in his own head".

So, if we grant for the moment that Wolfram is bat-shit crazy, do we ignore the book? I'm reminded of Newton, who was anything but a picture sanity and stability. He spent most of his time doing alchemy and looking for hidden meanings in the Hebrew Bible. His ego was an obstacle to his ability to share his results. Yet he was clearly a great genius. He was certainly "on to something". I'm sure Wolfram would welcome the comparison. 

It seems to me that, for the most part, the geniuses that do make history are perhaps a bit odd but generally sane and ordinary. I'm thinking of Einstein, Feynman, Bor, Faraday, Wilczek ... 

So, I may want to return to this book at some point. I found it quite easy to skim (by ignoring self-congratulation and claims that are close to tea leaf reading). The Kindle version solves the problem with tiny text. There are a few early observations that seem quite valid but are far from original, such as the need to use simple algorithms and not simple continuous formulae as tools to "explain" nature. On the other hand, I tend to steer away from authors who misrepresent or contradict what I already know, especially when they fail to connect their work to the work of others.

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Wayne Brown