Actually, no (well, err, "actually, I don't know"). While I am unfamiliar with Isaac Asimov's psychohistory, I have read a lot of reviews of Stephen Wolfram's book about how the universe could be considered an algorithm, and the Atlantic article reminds me exactly of what he is saying. He states everything we observe can be explained by simple iterated rules. And, from my knowledge of fractals, from chaos theory, from cellular automata, I am very sympathetic to Wolfram's theories and the idea that simple rules, iterated, result in very complex phenomenon. Wolfram's theory is very powerful and I agree with it up to point. But it remains to be seen whether we, the material of life, the organism with a brain coupled with biological (read: evolutionary) and "meme" pressures, are governed by such a theory. I think the universe works in a computable fashion, but that is just my prejudiced opinion. I really wished, (really, really, really) that Wolframs book was peer reviewed because I think he is on to something. Simple observation proves him right (as he uses simple observation of natural phenomenon to argue his point), but nothing major, as we know it, confirms to his theory to the humanities or anything else.Anyway, incase people are wondering who Wolfram is (why, he is the inventor of Mathematica, of course! Now you should know who he is!) and what this book is about, I offer the book reviews:
Wired Magazine: The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything … (Stephen Levy wrote this article, and, well, people should know Stephen Levy is a great science/maths/complexity reporter... he wrote "Artificial Life" in 1992 which, it may seen dumb to admit, affected me deeply)
Forbes: God, Stephen Wolfram, and Everything Else
KurzweilAI.net: Reflections on Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"
BusinessWeek:Stephen Wolfram's Simple Science
Le Monde (for the francophones on the board… if you don't mind, could you summarize this for the lowly unilingual twit I am?): Stephen Wolfram propose de revisiter les lois de l'Univers.
ABC News: A Theory of Everything?
American Scientist: The World According to Wolfram. (your best bet to understand the intricacies of what his theories mean).
Wolfram Research (bit biased since, well, Stephen Wolfram runs the place, but it's a good biography): About Stephen Wolfram
MIT Press: A short interview with Wolfram.
I have to take exception to this though:
quote:
Another thing that struck me a lot watching 2001 this evening was how incredibly emotionally cold it is. I don't think I noticed that at all when I was a kid. But seeing the movie now I'm just amazed at how little human emotion there is in it. I think HAL was the most emotive of the bunch. When I was a kid I guess I had this vague idea that scientists were the kind of emotionless characters I saw portrayed in the movie. They never seemed to get excited about anything. Maybe that's a bit of what's wrong with science, actually. For most people there's so little passion in it. Just get the data, try to be fair to the data, and all that. Kubrick may have had that exactly right.
Sure, your run-of-the-mill scientist, analyzing some test-tube contents for the thousandth time may be unemotional over it, but when you get to the fringes: believe me, people get excited about the most peculiar stuff. A friend of mine met a prof that was excited analyzing sphagnum which, sometimes, only a small cellular difference differentiates a species of the plant. He couldn't believe this guy. If he found some sphagnum that appeared to new, he was ecstatic! Imagine being excited that you found out a fan by your monitor affected the screen: like, c'mon, these people are weird! To call these people unemotional, well, your blind to what they are doing, for the love of them doing it.
Salon: The next Newton?
Unfortunately, both the NY Times and the Globe ran excellent (and critical) reviews of Wolfram's work, but, alas, the NY Times wants money for the archive and the G&M erases it's articles in 7 days. The Economist had a review too, but they want money (surpise, surprise) as well. I checked my other media references, everything from the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, USA Today, Toronto Star, Halifax Herald (which doesn't seem to have a search option), National Post, Calgary Herald, Scientific American but they all come up nil. I'm sure these references are enough, though.
Wolfram may seem a bit whacked, but, (although not having read his book), I think there is a certain elegance to the idea that the universe is computational which, I would gather, lends credence to the applicability of "artificial societies" to understanding human events (these things are rule, or computational based, after all).
[ June 28, 2002: Message edited by: clockwork ]
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posted 27 June 2002 11:00 PM
