Stephen Wolfram

JANUARY 31, 2023

But by the end of the 1800s, with the existence of molecules increasingly firmly established, the Second Law began to often be treated as an almost-mathematically-proven necessary law of physics. But, first and foremost, the story of the Second Law is the story of a great intellectual achievement of the mid-19th century.

Energy 88

Energy Physics Argumentation Mathematics 88

Stephen Wolfram

JUNE 29, 2022

And for the past four years I’ve been sharing the “behind the scenes” of how it’s achieved—by livestreaming our Wolfram Language design review meetings. And that’s finally been achieved in Version 13.1. If we define a month “physically”, it corresponds to a certain fractional number of days: &#10005. In designing Version 13.1

Calculus 114

Calculus Construction Computer Argumentation 114

Stephen Wolfram

AUGUST 22, 2023

Indeed, so confident was he of his programming prowess that he became convinced that he should in effect be able to write a program for the universe—and make all of physics into a programming problem. It didn’t help that his knowledge of physics was at best spotty (and, for example, I don’t think he ever really learned calculus).

Computer 67

Computer Physics Science Sciences 67

Stephen Wolfram

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

And there was something else: the computer system I’d built was a language that I’d realized (in a nod to my experience with reductionist physical science) would be the most powerful if it could be based on principles and primitives that were as minimal as possible. Mathematical physics. It had worked out very well for the language.

Computer 55

Computer Mathematics Science Sciences 55

Stephen Wolfram

FEBRUARY 3, 2023

The Second Law of thermodynamics is considered one of the great general principles of physical science. Sometimes textbooks will gloss over everything; sometimes they’ll give some kind of “common-sense-but-outside-of-physics argument”. But our Physics Project has changed that picture. Why does the Second Law work?

Computer 92

Computer Energy Physics Construction 92

Stephen Wolfram

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

One might have thought it was already exciting enough for our Physics Project to be showing a path to a fundamental theory of physics and a fundamental description of how our physical universe works. Part of what this achieves is to generalize beyond traditional mathematics the kind of constructs that can appear in models.

Science 64

Science Sciences Physics Mathematics 64

Maydm

JUNE 11, 2021

I struggled in chemistry and I got very little support and so that meant that I couldn’t go on and take physics. “Miss Winnie, I tried to sign up for AP calculus and my counselor told me that, you know, she asked me ‘Are you sure you want to take that?'

STEM 52

STEM Economics Social Sciences Innovation 52

Stephen Wolfram

DECEMBER 13, 2021

When you do operations on Around numbers the “errors” are combined using a certain calculus of errors that’s effectively based on Gaussian distributions—and the results you get are always in some sense statistical. Also in the area of calculus we’ve added various conveniences to the handling of differential equations. &#10005.

Construction 67

Construction Computer Physics Accessibility 67