Book Review: A New Kind of Science | Online by Stephen Wolfram

(Image: By Richard Ling - Own work; Location: Cod Hole, Great Barrier Reef, Australia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=293495)

In 2002, Stephen Wolfram published A New Kind of Science (also known as NKS). It is based on the concept that relatively simple rules can create very complex systems. For the 20th anniversary, the book was made available free online: Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science | Online—Table of Contents (wolframscience.com).

Before jumping in to read a 1000-page book on science, I suggest reading a few warm-up articles to help understand NKS:

John Conway's Game of Life: Conway's Game of Life - Wikipedia

and

Rule 30 - Wikipedia (one rule of many based on NKS that produces interesting results - perhaps the pattern shown in the photo of the shell shown above).

NKS touches on many different branches of science, including computing, randomness, physics, and nature.

More on cellular automata: Triangular Automata.