I finally finished Wolfram's new book - A New Kind of Science - and can now comment on it.
He has a nice discussion of cellular automata with some very pretty illustrations ... I had the sense that I was pouring through a medieval bestiary rather anything related to science. In fact this is probably the core of my feeling about the book and Wolfram. He clearly is positioning himself as some new kind of zoologist, but he misses the mark - this isn't science.
He makes the statement; "whenever a phenomenon is encountered that seems complex it is taken almost for granted that the phenomenon must be the result of some underlying mechanism that is itself complex." This is in complete contradiction to how physicists work. One can think of any number of complex behavior with known simple mechanisms.
His characterization of evolution (macro and micro) is almost laughable - he states that (current) biology assumes that every feature of every organism has to be explained as optimizing the fitness of the organism. This is just silly and almost what you would expect to hear from a creationist.
It is troubling that the book is lacking in real predictions - he assails scientific journals as inadequate, but somehow ignores the fact that a peer reviewed scientific journal forces the author to distinguish between what they have claimed and what they have demonstrated by repeatable experiment.
I am left with the feeling that Wolfram is exhibiting a deep personality issue. He has always felt he is a spectacular genius and he has a few credentials which are, in reality, insufficient. (he is clearly clever and a glowing review by Feynman pushed him along further than his works would carry him on their own. The fact that he really hasn't contributed to fundamental science since his grad school days and that he airs frustration with the structure of science are interesting. I fear his relative isolation from the community has inspired a kind of delusion.
In science you really have to explain and then predict. I worry that the journalistic community loves lone knights and becomes blinded by their personalties as the real story. Wolfram makes a great story and the hype is huge - but in the end I think it is just hype.
Oh well - such a waste of money on the book. At least the pictures are pretty.
I am left with this nagging feeling that there is a bigger story out there ... Wolfram leaves the reader with the feeling that the core of real science is petty internecine warring and that only once and awhile really great ideas come along. The concept of producing knowledge by the accepted conventions of science seems lost on him. He also seems to be promoting the feeling that if something is difficult, it must be wrong. I fear the math and science phobic public will resonate with a chord that he may have unwittingly generated.
We have a problem that most of the technical press is not scientifically literate (there is a very literate scientific press, but it is much smaller). People like Peter Levy of Wired and George Johnson of the NY Times may have a reasonable connection with technology, but not with science.
11:26:15 PM 
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