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How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Stephen Wolfram

But, first and foremost, the story of the Second Law is the story of a great intellectual achievement of the mid-19th century. But in other ways it’s also a cautionary tale, of how the forces of “conventional wisdom” can blind people to unanswered questions and—over a surprisingly long time—inhibit the development of new ideas.

Energy 88
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The Physicalization of Metamathematics and Its Implications for the Foundations of Mathematics

Stephen Wolfram

And in what follows we’ll see the great power that arises from using this to combine the achievements and intuitions of physics and mathematics—and how this lets us think about new “general laws of mathematics”, and view the ultimate foundations of mathematics in a different light. and zero arguments: α[ ]. &#10005.

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The Concept of the Ruliad

Stephen Wolfram

The global structures of metamathematics , economics , linguistics and evolutionary biology seem likely to provide examples—and in each case we can expect that at the core is the ruliad, with its unique structure. And we can trace the argument for this to the Principle of Computational Equivalence.

Physics 122
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A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Stephen Wolfram

In early 1984 I visited MIT to use the machine to try to do what amounted to natural science, systematically studying 2D cellular automata. I think Yves Pomeau already had a theoretical argument for this, but as far as I was concerned, it was (at least at first) just a “next thing to try”.

Physics 95