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

Stephen Wolfram

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. There were still mathematical loose ends, as well as issues such as its application to living systems and to systems involving gravity.

Energy 88
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The Story Continues: Announcing Version 14 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

Stephen Wolfram

So did that mean we were “finished” with calculus? Somewhere along the way we built out discrete calculus , asymptotic expansions and integral transforms. And in Version 14 there are significant advances around calculus. Another advance has to do with expanding the range of “pre-packaged” calculus operations.

Computer 102
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Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica ??????

Stephen Wolfram

You can give Threaded as an argument to any listable function, not just Plus and Times : &#10005. we’re adding SymmetricDifference : find elements that (in the 2-argument case) are in one list or the other, but not both. Now we can use the path function to make a “spiralling” tour video: College Calculus. In Version 13.1

Calculus 114
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Even beyond Physics: Introducing Multicomputation as a Fourth General Paradigm for Theoretical Science

Stephen Wolfram

Many would say that modern exact science was launched in the 1600s with the introduction of what we can call the “ mathematical paradigm ”: the idea that things in the world can be described by mathematical equations—and that their behavior can be determined by finding solutions to these equations.

Physics 65
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Multicomputation: A Fourth Paradigm for Theoretical Science

Stephen Wolfram

Many would say that modern exact science was launched in the 1600s with the introduction of what we can call the “ mathematical paradigm ”: the idea that things in the world can be described by mathematical equations—and that their behavior can be determined by finding solutions to these equations.

Science 64
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Expression Evaluation and Fundamental Physics

Stephen Wolfram

Since the standard Wolfram Language evaluator evaluates arguments first (“leftmost-innermost evaluation”), it therefore won’t terminate in this case—even though there are branches in the multiway evaluation (corresponding to “outermost evaluation”) that do terminate. If you set , then you set , you should get (not ) if you asked for.

Physics 108
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Remembering the Improbable Life of Ed Fredkin (1934–2023) and His World of Ideas and Stories

Stephen Wolfram

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). In 2015 Ed told me a nice story about his time at Caltech: In 1952–53, I was a student in Linus Pauling’s class where he lectured Freshman Chemistry at Caltech. And it was agreed that we would do it.