[cwkoss]

Ah. We'll speaking personally, mathematical formalisms & theories sound very intimidating, whereas CA-type simulations are so approachable many are 'fun toys' that kids can enjoy playing with.

A mathematically formal approach does sound potentially more useful, but I'd have no idea how to approach that sort of problem. I speculate that the venn diagram of people who want to work on these types of problems and also have the depth of formal math understanding to actually achieve it is a small handful of people who have plenty of other interesting problems to work on.

Or maybe someone has done this work successfully, but the depth of knowledge required to understand it has prevented wider awareness?