Cellular Automata And Complexity: Collected Papers [Paperback]

Stephen Wolfram (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201626640 | ISBN-13: 978-0201626643 | Publication Date: February 21, 1994

Are mathematical equations the best way to model nature? For many years it had been assumed that they were. But in the early 1980s, Stephen Wolfram made the radical proposal that one should instead build models that are based directly on simple computer programs. Wolfram made a detailed study of a class of such models known as cellular automata, and discovered a remarkable fact: that even when the underlying rules are very simple, the behavior they produce can be highly complex, and can mimic many features of what we see in nature. And based on this result, Wolfram began a program of research to develop what he called “A Science of Complexity.”The results of Wolfram’s work found many applications, from the so-called Wolfram Classification central to fields such as artificial life, to new ideas about cryptography and fluid dynamics. This book is a collection of Wolfram’s original papers on cellular automata and complexity. Some of these papers are widely known in the scientific community; others have never been published before. Together, the papers provide a highly readable account of what has become a major new field of science, with important implications for physics, biology, economics, computer science and many other areas.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This volume seems to be interesting for computer scientists, especially for those engaged in parallelization, and for physicists and chemists having to discover the basic rules of complex systems (by cellular computer simulation). G.Wolf J. Inf. Process. Cybern, 1987 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Stephen Wolfram was born in England in 1959. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech at the age of twenty. Wolfram’s early work in particle physics, cosmology and computer science earned him one of the first MacArthur awards. Wolfram began his work on the problem of complexity in 1981. And after writing the sequence of papers collected in this book, Wolfram founded the first research center and the first journal devoted to the study of complexity. Then in 1986, he formed Wolfram Research, Inc., and began the development of Mathematica. Released in 1988, Mathematica has become the standard software system for technical computation used by scientists, engineers, students and others around the world. Wolfram has been the recipient of many awards for science and business. He now divides his time between basic research and the leadership of his company.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (February 21, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201626640
• ISBN-13: 978-0201626643
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,140,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

121 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice coverage of Wolframs published work, September 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Cellular Automata And Complexity: Collected Papers (Paperback)

This is a nice collection of wolframs work on cellular automata (which first appeared as a number of papers in various physics journals). It is a nice coverage of cellular automata, but it would have been nice to give more credit to von Neuman for his pioneering work in cellular automata theory.

There is also an annoying habit for all of his work to concentrate on deterministic cellular automata, and the mathematics is constrained to this. Recent work has indicated that the origin of complexity in our universe is from random sources that are preserved.. not that the complexity all came from the initial conditions.

It is especially interesting to note in his book how the different rules of cellular automata play out to create varying degrees of complexity. It takes a very specific rule set indeed to allow for interesting complex behaviors to show up, as evinced by the long search Conway undertook to discover "life".

Hopefully Wolfram will comment on the recent research that indicates that complexity is introduced into our universe through nondeterministic phenomena. He also should have presented Fredkins ideas about reversible computation to more fully flush out the relationship between cellular automata, computability and reversibility.