Remove Argumentation Remove Chemistry Remove Mathematics Remove Natural Sciences
article thumbnail

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
article thumbnail

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

Stephen Wolfram

It’s a story I’ve told elsewhere , but one of the important elements for our purposes here is that in designing the system I called SMP (for “Symbolic Manipulation Program”) I ended up digging deeply into the foundations of computation, and its connections to areas like mathematical logic.

Physics 95