A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram: Monster Raving Egomania
This article is a highly critical review of Stephen Wolfram's book 'A New Kind of Science,' characterizing the author as a crank. The reviewer recounts a personal legal dispute with Wolfram Research to provide context for their negative assessment of the work's scientific validity.
Why it matters
It highlights the tension between academic rigor and the commercialization of scientific research, as well as the controversial reputation of a prominent figure in computational science.
The Bactra Review: Occasional and eclectic book reviews by Cosma Shalizi
A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity
Attention conservation notice : Once, I was one of the authors of a paper on cellular automata . Lawyers for Wolfram Research Inc. threatened to sue me, my co-authors and our employer, because one of our citations referred to a certain mathematical proof, and they claimed the existence of this proof was a trade secret of Wolfram Research. I am sorry to say that our employer knuckled under, and so did we, and we replaced that version of the paper with another, without the offending citation. I think my judgments on Wolfram and his works are accurate, but they're not disinterested.
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