Remove Calculus Remove Chemistry Remove Economics Remove Primary
article thumbnail

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

Stephen Wolfram

And indeed particularly in chemistry and engineering it’s often been in the background, justifying all the computations routinely done using entropy. There’s lots of rhetoric: The applicability of the calculus of probabilities to a particular case can of course never be proved with precision.

Energy 88
article thumbnail

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

Stephen Wolfram

But then—basically starting in the early 1980s—there was a burst of progress based on a new idea (of which, yes, I seem to have ultimately been the primary initiator): the idea of using simple programs , rather than mathematical equations, as the basis for models of things in nature and elsewhere. Chemistry / Molecular Biology.

Physics 65
educators

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Multicomputation: A Fourth Paradigm for Theoretical Science

Stephen Wolfram

But then—basically starting in the early 1980s—there was a burst of progress based on a new idea (of which, yes, I seem to have ultimately been the primary initiator): the idea of using simple programs , rather than mathematical equations, as the basis for models of things in nature and elsewhere. Chemistry / Molecular Biology.

Science 64
article thumbnail

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.