""I'm familiar with Wolfram's general premise, that most highly complex phenomena spawn from a handful of basic interactions more elegantly simple than we would ever intuitively suspect.
This seems pretty much in line with the reductionist nature of scientific discovery and the search for a grand unification theory. Does he offer any compelling angles or insights into complexity theory that have not been covered previously?""
Well, in places that I have worked we essentially had the same premise - worded in a different way than Wolframs fundamental theorem. The strength of Wolframs work is that he has provided an interweaving/connecting of various topics with phenomenlogical justification. Nobody - to my knowledge - has published similar investigations (for a variety of reasons). So in a sense his "line in the sand" is important. His fundamental theorem and its associated viewpoint is something that will be new to most people in the field. Wolframs point is that by shifting your viewpoint of many fundamental phenomena you just might end up with a more fruitful vantage point - and which also might be useful for attacking some types of problems.
This seems pretty much in line with the reductionist nature of scientific discovery and the search for a grand unification theory. Does he offer any compelling angles or insights into complexity theory that have not been covered previously?""
Well, in places that I have worked we essentially had the same premise - worded in a different way than Wolframs fundamental theorem. The strength of Wolframs work is that he has provided an interweaving/connecting of various topics with phenomenlogical justification. Nobody - to my knowledge - has published similar investigations (for a variety of reasons). So in a sense his "line in the sand" is important. His fundamental theorem and its associated viewpoint is something that will be new to most people in the field. Wolframs point is that by shifting your viewpoint of many fundamental phenomena you just might end up with a more fruitful vantage point - and which also might be useful for attacking some types of problems.

