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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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Can AI Solve Science?

Stephen Wolfram

of what’s now Wolfram Language —we were trying to develop algorithms to compute hundreds of mathematical special functions over very broad ranges of arguments. Back in 1987—as part of building Version 1.0 In the past, people had painstakingly computed series approximations for specific cases. But what happens with other paths?

Science 122
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Remembering the Improbable Life of Ed Fredkin (1934–2023) and His World of Ideas and Stories

Stephen Wolfram

Ed was never officially a “test pilot”, but he told me stories about figuring out how to take his plane higher than anyone else—and achieving weightlessness by flying his plane in a perfect free-fall trajectory by maintaining an eraser floating in midair in front of him.