severoon's Journal: POST: I Can't Believe This Post Is Not Redundant...

This post was in reply to a story about Stephen Wolfram's book, A New Kind of Science. The main points of the story (and the ensuing /. discussion) seemed to revolve around the fact that much of the book was not new research and the negative reaction of the scientific community to his claims of founding a new way of looking at things.

I was a little surprised to see that no one really addressed the egos of all the players involved in these events (plenty of posts talked about Wolfram's ego, to be sure, but few mentioned that egos played a part in his book's rather cool reception by his peers). Also, no one had broached the fact that he could not publish his work to the general public without rehashing much of what had been done before, so, to me at least, it was expected that much of the content would not be new research.

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I read through the majority of the 310 comments on this story (310 as of this moment) and I can't believe no one has touched on an important aspect of the scientific community's backlash against Wolfram's book: he end-ran them.

He may be egotistical (I read most of ANKOS and I did not find his constant self-laudation very charming), but so are many people in science and math. In what other fields can one prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the significance of one's own contributions? The Huxleys and Jungs of history could never have felt quite the same tinge of accomplishment as Einstein must have, because literature and psychology have no such measure of the value of an idea. So there is more to scientific self-puffery than just ego, it is a very human thing for humans to fall into this trap when they have managed to make a real, recognizable contribution. (Earlier in this thread, in fact, I saw someone taken to task for Newton's ever-misunderstood "on the shoulders of giants" as a symbol of his--Newton's, that is--humility...which it was not, though arguably so.)

So I think we can all agree, if on nothing else, that Wolfram's ego is definitely not the only ego involved here. Instead of publishing his ideas in the framework of the mathematical and scientific research communities, he chose to publish his findings to the world-at-large. This, in and of itself, can be seen as an immensely egotistical act (one I'm glad of, though, as I'll explain). By doing this, he is essentially saying that his ideas are so great they are likely to be misunderstood (the plaintive cry of many a genius) by his peers and relegated to the back shelf until the community catches up with him. He's confident he's hit on some seed of truth, and he wants to spur the world to cultivate it so he can live to see its fruits...probably so he can hear his praises sung while still living. Not very selfless.

His feeling that his genius is too great to be contained by the research community is felt by every other member of that community, but they lack the means to do anything about it. ANKOS (the book, not the science) is quite enough of an affront to these people for them to bring the full weight of their intellectual wrecking ball to bear on Wolfram's tome. Certainly this is not true across the board, but just as certainly there is at least some venom reserved for him out of animus.

The problem with all this demogoguery that inevitably follows great men around is that the focus very quickly falls upon the men involved instead of the ideas. (One thing we all must admit: Wolfram is a great man. Keep in mind that I'm using "great" in the sense of the gravitas of his ideas. In this same sense Hitler was one of history's terrible greats, as the grand sum of his ideas had enough weight to sweep an entire nation to madness. In fact, in this sense I supposed Hitler was a much greater man than Wolfram; if Hitler's ideas swept a community to madness, Wolfram's ideas only achieved anger. :-) ) So to Wolfram's serious detractors, I hear you with a suspicious ear, while fairness requires that I simply ignore Wolfram's own self-congratulations. If only all such commentary were passionate only toward ideas and dispassionate towards men, it would not take history so long to sift through the idea pile.

We ought to judge people for the most part based on their actions and the results of those actions, not their motivations. Wolfram may have end-run his community out of ego, but I believe the effect in this particular case to be positive. Look at it this way: he has taken the time to introduce these ideas to an entire generation of laypeople. This may present the work in a form that is undesirable to academic researchers, but it certainly does not preclude them from judging those ideas. The upshot is, it's an inclusive strategy that makes the work accessible to everyone. What's bad about that? I've always clung to Asimov's notion that science may be confined to the research lab, but in the realm of ideas everyone has a potential profit and should be given a share.

This is why I am willing to forgive Wolfram whatever shortcomings of this work. Like him or not, like his reasons or not, none of us would be having this discussion right now if he hadn't acted the way he did. I wouldn't know about the many things within his book, not to mention the dovetailer algorithm or Zuse, the products of this discussion; instead I'd probably know the outcome of another episode of My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance (of course this is hyperbole...seriously, folks, whoever's watching this show, stop it!--and if you're a Nielsen household, well...shame on you, sir). The ideas he introduced may not be his own, as some of his critics charge, but still the ideas have been introduced and I trust that history will sort them under their proper headings.

In my mind, this accounts for the prevalent accusations of plaigerism on Wolfram's part. In the worst case his claim on many of the ideas contained within ANKOS is ambiguous, despite his aggressive implications he never does come right out and say they're his. Wolfram certainly did nothing to help his case in the matter...still, we should be impartial in the offing: for the most part his book "plaigerizes" in much the same way that a scientific paper "plaigerizes" all of the work on which it rests. The difference is, a paper intended for the research community expects each member of the audience to be well-versed in the supporting research and to be helpful in pointing out such mistakes, treating them as inadvertant. Wolfram's audience is not so well-versed and such background must be assimilated into the main body of the work many levels deep; if every scientific paper were under the same requirement, I think such inadvertant mistakes would be far more numerous.

Additionally, I find it quite believable that many of the ideas Wolfram devised on his own were simply already discovered. After all, for more than the last decade he has closed himself off from his peers, and peers are the best resource for this kind of information ("Good idea, Stephen, but Zuse already said this 50 years ago.") So it is very possible that he simply thinks he has contributed some things that were already previously discovered. Again, in regular scientific research, papers often hit on notions that have previously been discovered without citing them out of ignorance of the previous work--this is forgiven because it happens to everyone. Wolfram is getting no such consideration, and I think in at least some cases it is due him.

Overall, I'd say this book is far more beneficial to the layperson than to science in general, but this benefit is enough for me to justify a degree of respect for Wolfram. He is brilliant and he's simply trying to leave a legacy, which his ego no doubt feels is his birthright. This is often the case when the tiny car of ego has an engine of vast intellect powering it. The only difference between Wolfram and every brilliant scientist is this: every scientist wants to be the next Einstein; Wolfram is simply making his grab for the brass ring by unconventional means.

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