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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. The theory of heat will hereafter form one of the most important branches of general physics.

Energy 88
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Remembering the Improbable Life of Ed Fredkin (1934–2023) and His World of Ideas and Stories

Stephen Wolfram

Indeed, so confident was he of his programming prowess that he became convinced that he should in effect be able to write a program for the universe—and make all of physics into a programming problem. 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).