Stephen Wolfram Q&A
Submit a questionSome collected questions and answers by Stephen Wolfram
Questions may be edited for brevity; see links for full questions.
Historical Perspectives
(10)July 1, 2008
From: Interview by Luciano Floridi, Philosophy of Computing and Information: 5 Questions
What do you consider the most neglected topics and/or contributions in late 20th-century studies of computation and/or information?
Computer and information science have tended to define themselves in a rather engineering-based way—concentrating on creating and studying systems that perform particular specified tasks.
But there’s a whole different approach that’s much closer to natural science: to just investigate the computational universe of possible programs, and see what’s out there.
One might have thought that most programs that one would encounter this way would not do anything very interesting. Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
What other scientists or researchers, past and present, do you admire most?
Well, one might think this was a very subjective question… but perhaps there’s a way to answer it, at least in part, by pure data mining…
Let’s look at the list of people referenced in the NKS book: https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/index/names/
Now just count the mentions (with Mathematica of course)… and here are the winners: Alan Turing (19); Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Do you think intelligence has “normalized”? Basically, with more people alive than ever before and college education available to a large percentage of the world’s population, do you think we are seeing fewer break-out intellects because the playing field is more level? For instance, no more Maxwells, Newtons, Einsteins, etc. Or is it just that we are unable to see the current visionaries while still living in the same generation as their bodies of work?
It definitely is easier to see “break-out intellects” in retrospect than at the time. It’s also worth realizing that the domains of greatest creativity have shifted over the years. Sometimes they’ve involved science, sometimes not.
Also, it’s usually harder to have something “break-out” happen when there’s an area that’s more institutionalized. Read more
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February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
Who is your favorite historical scientist? Why? What is in your opinion the most significant scientific achievement of the human race?
It depends what you mean by “favorite”. There are people who have ended up making contributions that are particularly relevant to me (e.g. Gottfried Leibniz, Kurt Godel, Alan Turing). There are people who would have been fun to meet (e.g. Ramon Llull, Galileo, Ada Lovelace, Albert Einstein). And there are people who managed to live their lives well in one way or another around their scientific accomplishments (e.g. Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
Which do you think is more important to the history of science: the accomplishments of scientific geniuses or the broader research trends of the scientific community?
As in so many things, new ideas and new directions in science are most often the result of leadership by one or a small number of people. But almost always, they have to build on lots of detailed work that’s been done by many other people.
But even after someone comes up with a great idea, Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
If Turing had died before publishing his seminal Turing machine paper in the 1930s, how much would this have delayed the construction of digital computers?
Interesting question. The idea of universal computation actually arose at about the same time in three places: Gödel’s “general recursive functions”, Turing’s “Turing machines”, and Church’s “lambda calculus”. It turned out that all these formulations are equivalent, and that was actually known pretty quickly. But Turing’s one is much easier to understand, Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
In writing about all of these intelligent people, did you notice any environmental factors which may have contributed to their success?
Interesting question. Richard Feynman always used to tell me that he thought “peace of mind” was a critical prerequisite to doing creative work. But certainly not everyone in the book had that when they were doing their most important work. And actually I think if there’s one theme I noticed it’s that external stimuli and external constraints often seem to play a crucial role. Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
Who in your book Idea Makers do you relate to most? Or who do you think is most like you, and why?
Difficult question. In terms of the things I’ve been interested in, Alan Turing and Gottfried Leibniz are probably the closest. But in terms of personality, they were very different from each other, and, I think, from me. I’m basically a “long projects” person: I work on projects for decades (Mathematica, Wolfram Language, Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
How much commonality is there between legendary mathematicians/scientists from ages ago, say from 1816, and more modern scientists? Would those legendary scientists from centuries past be significantly changed if they were brought up in this more modern environment?
Yes, things have certainly changed a lot from 1816 to 2016. (Note that the book does include quite a few recent people too.)
One important practical feature is that people are on average living longer. Ada Lovelace and Ramanujan, for example, would almost certainly have lived decades longer with modern healthcare. Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
Are there problems that were difficult to solve (historically) but can now be solved trivially using the Wolfram Language? If so, which are your favorites?
About problems that become easy to solve with the Wolfram Language: yes, lots and lots and lots. People mostly just go and use Mathematica—or now the Wolfram Language—to solve problems, and I don’t hear about what they do. But it’s amazing how often I’ll be at some science or technology event and some prominent person will say “oh, Read more