"Three centuries ago science was transformed by the dramatic new idea that rules based on mathematical equations could be used to describe the natural world. My purpose in this book is to initiate another such transformation, and to introduce a new kind of science that is based on the much more general types of rules that can be embodied in simple computer programs.

It has taken me the better part of twenty years to build the intellectual structure that is needed, but I have been amazed by its results. For what I have found is that with the new kind of science I have developed it suddenly becomes possible to make progress on a remarkable range of fundamental issues that have never successfully been addressed by any of the existing sciences before."

"'The Rule 30 automaton is the most surprising thing I've ever seen in science,' Wolfram told London's Daily Telegraph. 'Even though it starts off from just one black cell, applying the same simple rule over and over again makes Rule 30 produce [an] amazingly complex pattern.

'It took me several years to absorb how important this was. But in the end, I realized that this one picture contains the clue to what's perhaps the most long-standing mystery in all of science: where in the end, the complexity of the natural world comes from.'"