Making everything computational—including the fundamental theory of physics

Stephen Wolfram

March 2, 2021 at 2:00 P.M. (video)

Abstract

For any field X, if there isn’t a “computational X” yet there soon will be. 400 years ago mathematical notation enabled the creation of the mathematical sciences and their applications. For the past 40 years I’ve been working to create a full-scale computational language to enable “computational X” for all X. I’ll talk about (and demo) what this entails, and how it provides new ways of thinking about technical problems. I’ll also talk about the basic science of the computational universe, and the transformation of both modeling and technology discovery that it implies. Until recently, fundamental physics still seemed like an area to which the ideas of computation didn’t apply. I’ll talk about the surprising and dramatic progress we’ve made over the past year or so in leveraging the ideas of computation to find a truly fundamental theory of physics.

Speaker

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; the originator of the Wolfram Physics Project; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of more than four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.