New Kind of Science : Part 1
Cellular Automata & Other Visual Tools in a New Mathematics
Tuesday evenings, 6:30 - 8:30 pm 
Free overview January 19th
Sliding scale fees : $250 - $350
Do you ever wish that mathematics could be re-invented in a way that makes it easier, more visual, intuitive and useful for anyone, including non-mathematicians? Have you ever considered new way of doing science that doesn't depend on the reduction of nature into parts? This reading seminar & lecture course may be what you're looking for. Based on the book A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram, the course is about just that new kind of mathematics and a new way of doing science fundamentally different from the math of the last 10 centuries and the science of the last 4 centuries.
Gone are numbers, letters, square roots, equations and X/Y graphs. Instead, Wolfram's mathematics are based on cellular automata (CA) and related forms of computational processes like Turing "machines". In these processes, computers do the work and represent the results on a computer monitor in cascading patterns ranging from simple repetitive order to stunningly chaotic complexity, including many demonstrating a haunting beauty on the edge of chaos that seem to speak to us on some intuitive level about the true nature of nature. Utterly unlike any kind of mathematics currently taught in schools, CA concepts are easily understood by middle school students; they are far more easily understood than algebra and calculus, yet they are more powerful than advanced techniques in calculus as a tool for understanding nature.
Furthermore, CA and related computational processes promise radical new ways of doing science, also fundamentally different from how it has been done for the last few centuries, and extremely profound - even if controversial - philosophical implications for our understanding of reality itself, including the nature of life and consciousness.
This is an advanced class for students who have either completed or at co-enrolled in Euglena's course "How Nature Works" or our older Complexity 101 or the equivalent from another school. It will continue for a minimum of 10 weeks and focus on the first 6 of 12 chapters of A New Kind of Science, with an opportunity to extend study into later chapters interested students.