A New Kind of Science

The distinctive idea is easy to state, though it needs some examples to appreciate. It is that simple rules can generate complex very complex outcomes when they are repeatedly applied. Isolated examples of this phenomenon have been known for centuries. For example, the number p has a simple definition the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and there is a quite simple formula to calculate its digits. The result begins: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640 6286208998628034825342117068...