MathWorld Headline News

A New Kind of Science in Stores May 14

April 9, 2002--After more than two decades of labor, noted scientist and Mathematica creator Stephen Wolfram has announced the completion of his long-awaited book A New Kind of Science. This 1197-page book constructs a new way of looking at the operation of the natural world in terms of simple computer programs. This paradigm represents a new and abstract system for understanding such diverse disciplines as mathematics, physics, biology, social science, computer science, philosophy, art, and technology in terms of general rules of essentially any type. In this work, Wolfram summarizes his conclusions in a single basic principle of computation, and uses this principle to derive an unprecedented array of implications for science and scientific thinking.

A New Kind of Science uses scientific computation as a means for understanding both the natural world and abstract mathematical systems. In particular, it extends Wolfram's early insights into cellular automata (a field in which he did pioneering work and is widely regarded to have founded) using simple and elegant rule-based computations. These calculations have been implemented almost exclusively in Mathematica, a technical computing system that Wolfram created and subsequently developed and marketed by founding Wolfram Research, Inc.

The book contains hundreds of beautiful Mathematica-created illustrations that serve to illustrate the discoveries presented in the book. The book also features an extensive set of historical and technical notes that serve to summarize a number of additional discoveries.

A New Kind of Science will be available in stores on May 14. With its release, Wolfram hopes to share and communicate his discoveries with as wide a range of scientists and nonscientists as possible, and also to interest others in undertaking additional investigations building on his fundamental new results. To make this as easy as possible, Stephen Wolfram and Wolfram Research plan to release A New Kind of Science Explorer, a custom Mathematica-based product that will make interactive explorations fun and simple, in conjunction with the book's debut.