The very few basic principles of relativity and quantum mechanics like the frame independence of the speed of light and unitarity put very strict constraints on possible theories, for example only particles with spin 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2 and 2 are possible. String theory on the other hand turned out to allow a ridicules large number - like 10 to the 500 - of different vacuum states and therefore you can have more or less whatever you want by fixing parameters in this way or another.
I may of course be totally wrong but that were my first thoughts, unless you can somehow derive a lot of constraints, using graphs to explain the universe seems a way to general idea to me. But again, I never read anything about Wolfram's ideas, at least nothing I can remember.
Prior to reading his proposal, I likely would have agreed with you that ontology is lost; I'm less sure now. After reading his ideas, I see a glimmer of hope for discovering a small, simple set of primitives and rules for modeling the universe. A graph/knot-based theory would be composed of far more simple primitives than differential equation based theories; the more abstract differential equation models would arise through statistical mechanics.
By the way, I think in some sense space is already discrete in QM. E.g. for a particle in a box you have a discrete set of states.