Posted by Scott Ellis (216.87.95.64) on June 10, 2002 at 00:24:01:
Hello All,
Wanted to make sure you all know about this. It is very exciting indeed!
Stephen Wolfram is the man behind Mathematica, the ubiquitous math software you are probably familiar with. Do you know those computer "life simulators?" Where you apply an algorithmic rule to an initial condition and it shows how the organisms evolve? Wolfram has taken that idea and shown that it is actually the correct way to model nature. Therefore, mathematics is just an artifice and has led Science down a dead end. Algorithms, not mathematics, express the true "language" of the universe.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25621.html
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/29/books-werthheim.shtml
http://www.msnbc.com/news/761372.asp?cp1=1
http://www.wolframscience.com
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/
If he is right, this is the beginning of a true revolution in Science.
It is interesting to note that Life is a clear violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the law of increasing entropy. In life and evolution there is a natural increase in order, which is a decrease in entropy. Life is a perpetuating system... a true perpetual motion machine.
If the basic rules that govern life and evolution (algorithms) also govern the physical world, then it becomes conceivable that a physical/mechanical system could be made to operate in a perpetually repeating cycle.
Scott