Stephen Wolfram

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

And so it was that in 1985 I began to promote the idea of a new field of “complex systems research”, or, for short “complexity”—fueled by the discoveries I’d made about things like cellular automata. And while they used computers as practical tools, they never made the jump to seeing computation as a core paradigm for thinking about science.

Computer 55

Computer Mathematics Science Sciences 55

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

AUGUST 22, 2023

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). He was going for what he saw as the big prize: using them to “construct the universe”. But it also led him to the idea that the universe must be a giant cellular automaton—whose program he could invent.

Computer 68

Computer Physics Science Sciences 68