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

Stephen Wolfram

He’s writing a paper, he says, basically to clarify the Second Law, (or, as he calls it, “the second fundamental theorem”—rather confidently asserting that he will “prove this theorem”): Part of the issue he’s trying to address is how the calculus is done: The partial derivative symbol ∂ had been introduced in the late 1700s.

Energy 88
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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). But suffice it say to that Ed’s old nemesis—calculus—comes in very handy. It’s actually a nice application for calculus. The details are a bit complicated—and I’ve put them in an appendix below.