Why I took a chance on Wolfram Physics with Jonathan Gorard

The Last Theory

Jonathan Gorard admits that it was a risk, for his academic career, to work on the Wolfram Physics project.

In this third excerpt from my recent conversation with Jonathan, I asked him how he thought about that risk and why he decided to take it.

He told me that the opportunity to work with Stephen Wolfram on this new model is a bit like being given an opportunity to work with von Neumann and Ulam on cellular automata, or with Turing, Church and Gödel on computational models, back in the early twentieth century.

So I asked Jonathan whether he thought, as I do, that the reframing physics in terms of computation feels like we’re in a scientific revolution, as important as the reframing of physics in terms of mathematics several hundred years ago.

“It’s a strong statement,” he replied, “but I don’t think it’ll end up being too inaccurate.”

For me, the opportunity to talk to Jonathan about Wolfram Physics feels a bit like being given an opportunity to interview Dirac, Heisenberg, Pauli or Schrödinger back in the early days of quantum mechanics.

These are exciting times.

—

Jonathan Gorard

• Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project
• Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University
• Jonathan Gorard on Twitter

• The Centre for Applied Compositionality
• The Wolfram Physics Project

People and Concepts mentioned by Jonathan

• John von Neumann
• Stanislaw Ulam

• Alan Turing
• Alonzo Church
• Kurt Gödel

• Quantum information theory

• Undecidability
• Irreducibility

• Manojna Namuduri
• Xerxes D. Arsiwalla

• ZX-Calculus and Extended Hypergraph Rewriting Systems I: A Multiway Approach to Categorical Quantum Information Theory – Jonathan Gorard, Manojna Namuduri, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla
• ZX-Calculus and Extended Wolfram Model Systems II: Fast Diagrammatic Reasoning with an Application to Quantum Circuit Simplification – Jonathan Gorard, Manojna Namuduri, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla

Image credits

• John von Neumann – Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Stanisław Ulam – Los Alamos National Laboratory

For images from the Los Alamos National Laboratory: Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Triad National Security, LLC, operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor Triad makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.

I release The Last Theory as a video too! Watch here.

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