QA on Wolframs Book On Chaos/Biology/Mathmatics/Computation...

Almost all the science thats been done for the past three hundred or so years has been based in the end on the idea that things in our universe somehow follow rules that can be represented by traditional mathematical equations. The basic idea that underlies A New Kind of Science is that thats much too restrictive, and that in fact one should consider the vastly more general kinds of rules that can be embodied, for example, in computer programs.What started my work on A New Kind of Science are the discoveries I made about what simple computer programs can do. One might have thought that if a program was simple it should only do simple things. But amazingly enough, that isnt even close to correct. And in fact what Ive discovered is that some of the very simplest imaginable computer programs can do things as complex as anything in our whole universe. Its this point that seems to be the secret thats used all over nature to produce the complex and intricate things we see. And understanding this point seems to be the key to a whole new way of thinking about a lot of very fundamental questions in science and elsewhere. And thats what I develop in A New Kind of Science.
http://www.wolframscience.com/qanda/