I came across this concept of membrane computing, which appears to have been created entirely by a mathematician from my country (Romania), and further developed by his son, also a mathematician.
At a glance, it seems to be a very prolific field, with many papers and citations. Looking closer, however, I begun to see a lot of names repeating, you can probably map out a neat tree with the inventor Gheorghe Păun at the roots and his students branching out. This would, of course, be expected of any new field of research, but after trying to skim through a couple of these articles, I can't shake the feeling that this is all just a lot of arbitrary mumbo-jumbo building on other arbitrary mumbo-jumbo, with no novelty and almost no practical or theoretical use. It reminds of constructal theory, another great piece of Romanian mathematical fan fiction.
I am, however, a physicist by training, not a mathematician, so I may be limited in my capacity to appraise the value of this theory and of these P-systems (P from Păun, the author's name). I may be dead wrong. Can someone with more maths credentials take a look and confirm or infirm my gut instinct here?
