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Back in the early 1980s Stephen Wolfram wrote a number of seminal papers that began the field of Cellular Automata. Yes, its origins do go back to Von Neumann and Ulam, but the subject only really took off as a field of scientific endeavor with this collected early work of Wolfram's. As such this is a very valuable historical collection where the reader can actually see the subject of CA being created and developed year by year. You can see, amongst other things, the unfolding of the four part classification scheme, the algebraic properties of CA, higher order CA, universal computation, and of course complexity.
John Conway's Game of Life cellular automaton which predates Wolfram by a decade is also mentioned - but for the most part Wolfram's own work takes center stage.
In the CA world, complexity evolves from a simple set of rules and this single notion has made CA a valuable tool in modelling a multitude of natural phenomena. It does not represent the end of mathematical modelling but represents another approach to viewing the world we live in. Interestingly, some of the models are virtually mathematics free and in some cases do a better job than the more traditional partial differentiation approach. As a bi-product with CA, you get a visual portrayal of how your model evolves with time. This visual aspect is one of the many attractions of the CA approach and so conspicuous in Wolfram's works.
Of course, the field of CA has itself evolved considerably from Wolfram's seminal beginnings. But if you want one reference work of how it all began then this is an excellent source.
- Paperback: 608 pages
- Publisher: Westview Press; 1 edition (July 3, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0201626640
- ISBN-13: 978-0201626643
- Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 1 customer review
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,849,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10107 in Evolution (Books)
- #14729 in Mathematics (Books)
- #817 in Mathematical Logic
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