CS researchers find way to derive laws of nature from stacks of data
cacm.acm.org
cacm.acm.org
In that context, this sounds like a nice piece of work-- it integrates the data analysis and model validation steps.
However, it's also clear that the algorithms were fed pertinent data from a meaningful physical setup. In other words, good experimental design carried a lot more of the burden of the discovery, than the computer algorithm that sorted through the data.
To me that indicates that the experimental design wasn't all that great.
I suppose there is a possibility that for some more complicated things formulas don't converge and thus a brute force search would not be able to optimize a solution. However for most thing, I do expect solutions derive from other solutions and things converge.
Still, often the most brilliant things seem obvious in hindsight, kudos to the team.
Computers are fantastic at deductive logic - taking a set of data and performing operations according to a ruleset to get something useful out of it. But they've been terrible at forming the rules themselves up until now.
If we can give computers inductive abilities then that's worldchanging.
Given crude initial conditions and some indication of what variables to consider
The only induction done in the whole process was done by the researchers in this step - otherwise the algorithm wouldn't have had anything to "evolve" to.