One of my favourite thinking-outside-the-box scientists is cellular automata guru Stephen Wolfram (one two). If you've always thought his brick-like tome A New Kind of Science was a little too scary looking to actually buy (or check out, natch) and read, he's put it online here. It I may attempt a vast oversimplification of his ideas, he generally believes that the natural world is better understood through algorithms rather than equations. via OAN