The authoritative manner in which NKS presents a vast number of examples and arguments has been criticized as leading the reader to believe that each of these is original to Wolfram; in particular, one of the most substantial new technical results presented in the book, that the rule 110 cellular automaton is Turing complete, was not proven by Wolfram. Wolfram credits the proof to his research assistant Matthew Cook. But the book's notes section acknowledges many of the discoveries made by these other scientists, citing their names together with historical facts, although not in the form of a traditional bibliography section. Additionally, the idea that very simple rules often generate great complexity is already an established idea in science, particularly in chaos theory and complex systems.
The authoritative manner in which NKS presents a vast number of examples and arguments has been criticized as leading the reader to believe that each of these is original to Wolfram; in particular one of the most substantial new technical results presented in the book that the rule 110 cellular automaton is Turing complete was not proven by Wolfram Wolfram credits the proof to his research assistant Matthew Cook But the book's notes section acknowledges many of the discoveries made by these other scientists citing their names together with historical facts although not in the form of a traditional bibliography section Additionally the idea that very simple rules often generate great complexity is already an established idea in science particularly in chaos theory and complex systems