Reply to comment

On page 84 of A New Kind of Science, Wolfram depicts a variation on cellular automata involving branching patterns on theoretical trees, an idea that is further developed beginning on page 400.

I think it is interesting to think about how organisms could grow and develop according to simple rules like those of the cellular automata.  It’s harder to think about humans growing and developing like that, but with plants it’s fairly simple.  I’ve been growing plants for a few weeks now for one of my other classes and I spent some time today thinking about those plants in this light.  It makes a lot of sense that plants can grow and develop by following a set of if-then rules.  Plants tend to be somewhat linear in their layout, so it’s easier to think of them this way.  Animals are a little more complex, but if you break them down and look at the smallest parts, they too operate essentially on a set of if-then rules as well.  In my mind, it all comes down to the issue of scale.  I think it’s interesting how simple small things can look complex on a large scale (like animals) and seemingly complex things can seem simple on a large scale (like rule 30).  As we mentioned briefly in class, the size of the world in which the cellular automata operate is rather limiting.  If the world could be made large enough to really see some of the long-term results of the rules, I think we’d surprise ourselves even more.  It also brings me back to the question I asked last week:  should we concentrate on the ultimate output, or is the initial output and the first few steps just as important?  Are they important in different ways?