From Simple Rules to Malignant Complexity

The human endeavor to comprehend the natural world has often been guided by an intuitive appreciation for parsimony—the idea that intricate and complex phenomena might ultimately arise from a foundation of remarkably simple generative rules. This pursuit of underlying simplicity is a recurring theme in the history of science, from the elegant laws of classical physics to attempts to find unifying principles in biology. Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" (NKS) stands as a modern testament to this intellectual tradition, demonstrating how computational systems governed by elementary rules can produce outputs of astonishing complexity, mirroring patterns observed in nature.