hmmm. i found God, Stephen Wolfram, and Everything Else over at the complexity digest:
“Undermining Darwin, humiliating one of the most popular science authors alive in Gould, relegating mathematics to the bargain counter – Wolfram knows the scientific community may savage him. He has, he says, intentionally tackled each scientific discipline only enough to pique the interest of its members but not enough “to spoil everybody’s fun.” Still, he predicts, “People in specialties will be convinced I missed the point.” That’s why, he says, he’s included in the book “a complete history of their field” – as if that’s going to do anything but infuriate them more.
For all of his scientific brilliance and real-world success, there is something shockingly naive about Wolfram. He honestly thinks that he can attack the foundation of the modern world, the life’s work of millions of scientists, and the heart and soul of academia?and not suffer more than a brief, grumpy backlash before he is lauded as the new King of Science. He also is convinced that his New Science is so simple and so self-evident that he will be invited on talk radio shows all around the country – no doubt explaining the nuances of cellular automata to Howard Stern and his fans.”
if nothing else, a new kind of science should at list stir-up the pot a little, which is often a good thing.
