Stephen Wolfram

JANUARY 31, 2023

It began partly as an empirical law, and partly as something abstractly constructed on the basis of the idea of molecules, that nobody at the time knew for sure existed. But what’s important for our purposes here is that in the setup Carnot constructed he basically ended up introducing the Second Law.

Energy 88

Energy Physics Argumentation Mathematics 88

Stephen Wolfram

MARCH 5, 2024

A lot of science—and technology—has been constructed specifically around computationally reducible phenomena. And that’s for example why things like mathematical formulas have been able to be as successful in science as they have. It’s not exactly “solving science”, and it wouldn’t even allow one to “discover the unexpected”.

Science 122

Science Sciences Computer Mathematics 122

Stephen Wolfram

AUGUST 22, 2023

He was going for what he saw as the big prize: using them to “construct the universe”. In the mid-1990s, researching history for my book A New Kind of Science , (as I’ll discuss below) I had a detailed email exchange and long phone conversation with Ed about this. Richard Feynman and I would get into very fierce arguments.

Computer 67

Computer Physics Science Sciences 67