of new stuff is happening, people are more receptive to something new," but researchers in slower-moving disciplines such as physics and mathematics haven't given Wolfram such a warm reception.
Wolfram also has been criticized because his book was self-published without using the formal peer-review process in which colleagues formally screen scientific works. The process is designed to catch errors and weed out bad ideas.
Wolfram acknowledged that his computer-derived ideas are to an extent a product of his time, just as people began to believe that Mars had canals around the same time that canals were being built all over the world.
But that doesn't mean his ideas are wrong. Pioneering astronomer Galileo thought of the universe as working like a clock, an analogy that proved very useful in understanding the cosmos, he said.
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