Who's Dave?
I can't speak for Dave, but personally I wasn't "working hard" to "avoid" anything. You asked how an algorithm could be implemented without equations, and I gave the answer: By using state tables. Finite State Machines (FSMs) can implement any computable algorithm without equations or other high-level programming constructs, merely by looking up the current state and input values in the state table and then changing state/outputs to the new values listed in the table.
State tables are especially appropriate for the sort of cellular automota that Wolfram is talking about.
How you read some psychological motivation into my answer, I'll never know, but I submit that it says more about your state of mind than it does about mine.
What would a state table look like for F=m*a?
It would look like the state table for a multiplier circuit. That's basic circuit design fundamentals. Here's a Harvard EE/CS assignment that asks for that very thing as a 5-point question: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs141/asst/ass6.pdf (Pre-lab problem #2). That's for a simplified circuit (4-bit integer multiplier), but the floating-point state table isn't all that much harder once you've got the basics.