Hello
I hope this is not too far as a subject but I recently discovered a very interesting and promising computational theory about physics and the Universe of British-American scientists Stephen Wolfram. It is largely based on the principles of cellular automata which describes the evolution of a system from the very simple form to very complex by applying the same rule over and over again.
What is very interesting and beautfull is the way he describes these model visually through these hypergraphs.
I was thinking if there is anyone interested in how could these principles be applied in some GH app or script if it isnt already in one way or the other. Maybe even through an official collaboration with Wolfram`s team or himself. As far as i understand he is using his own programming language - Wolfram language - to generate these models.
I am very interested in his theory and I am wondering how could this be applied into architectural design or urban planning, or if there is something different from what is arleady being done through cellular automata or other recursive algorithms.
Here is the link to his initial announcement, if you scroll down a little you will start to see the visual representations of these structures. I am courious to see what is your opinion on this.
Conway’s game of life has been done in GH with Anemone, see
What I had in mind are those organic 3D hypergraphs structures that Wolfram is displaying in his website. Are those some kind of 3D application of cellular automata or is it a mix with some other principles too?
I just found this. They are 3D cellular automata. Not sure if is closer to Wolfram`s hypergraphs ? The thing that they emphasize is those nodes and their connection and it all starts with a sort of function or rule.
This is the very specific way on how he is generating the graphs using Wolfram language
I also want to mention that i am not a scripting guy but just very interested in the concept and possible implications.
I’d take Wolfram’s ideas about physics with a very large pinch of salt.
While his earlier work on creating Mathematica is widely respected, he went off the deep end a bit in his later career, and his theories about ‘physics’ aren’t really taken very seriously by the scientific community. I think it’s only because of his earlier fame and self-publishing/promotion that the work was able to get the amount of public attention it did.
That’s not to say that cellular automata and hypergraphs can’t be fascinating in their own right, but it’s probably more useful to look at other sources for these without the bombastic claims attached.
I have look through some of the criticism, without going too deep into them. I think there is a lot to discuss but even if you take the concept of Scientific Revolutions from Thomas Kuhn, i think you can identify at least some of the features in Wolfram model. You can also see the chapter about the connection with current physics but actually he is confirming current equations in physics through his entire paper. However i am not so entitled to defend it with very specific arguments as I am not a mathematician or physicist but I do see a lot of logic inside that can describe anything that exists. You also have to admit that current accepted physical science especially in quantum theory has come to a point where is kind a running in circles. There are many paradoxes and their explanations don`t make sense so far. Like the particle-wave state, uncertainty principle or entanglement. But even if we accept the criticism i think there is potential at least from a computational and design point of view…