The Stephen Wolfram Podcast cover image

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

History of Science & Technology Q&A (April 6, 2022)

Feb 17, 2023
01:38:46

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: Do you have a sense of the skills that an incoming fellow to the Wolfram Institute will have? What would effective preparation for institute-type work be? ​- What is the Emerald functionality that was mentioned for biological/cellular computational explorations? ​​- And what about around the world, overseas and in other countries? - You get some wonderful things out of pursuing science just for the sake of it. There are pejorative terms for this, like "fishing trips" and "stamp collecting," but such pursuits led to PCR technology just because someone was curious about thermophile bacteria. - ​Activity overseas and in other countries in regards to outreach programs in cooperation with education systems... you were mentioning some campaigns you had going on. ​- Will there be more active development on the computational capabilities of Wolfram Mathematica with the Wolfram Institute? ​- British physics is more geometry guild, and American physics is more group theory and particle physics guild. ​- What is your opinion about experimental mathematics and its relationship with classical "mainstream" mathematics? ​​​- I often hear that science needs philosophy to justify it. What are some historical examples of this? - ​​I think in a lot of places in history, the role of academic pursuit was that of a philosopher's role, but academic pursuit has attained a large amount of "division of labor." ​​- Philosophy and mathematical logic are starting to overlap more. Tarski's semantics relates formal logic to topology just like math and computer languages. ​​- Are there inherently philosophical ideas (i.e. that cannot be turned into a scientific one like the question of motion)? Can we distinguish them outright without knowing future scientific development?

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode