The founding of the Wolfram Physics Project with Jonathan Gorard

In 2019, Jonathan Gorard and Max Piskunov goaded Stephen Wolfram into pursuing his ideas for a new kind of science.

This led to the announcement of The Wolfram Physics Project in 2020.

Last week, I talked to Jonathan Gorard about the revolutionary ideas that have come out of the project.

In this first excerpt from our conversation, Jonathan talks about his instrumental role in the founding of The Wolfram Physics Project.

We cover why the time was right in 2020... and why it had been wrong in 2002 when Stephen Wolfram published his book A New Kind of Science.

We talk about how Wolfram Physics might take over from string theory, why Jonathan likes string theory... and why he doesn’t.

It was a true pleasure to talk to Jonathan about what might prove a pivotal moment in the history of science.

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Jonathan Gorard

• Jonathan Gorard at The Wolfram Physics Project https://www.wolframphysics.org/people...
• Jonathan Gorard at Cardiff University https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view...
• Jonathan Gorard on Twitter   / getjonwithit  

People and Projects

• The Centre for Applied Compositionality http://www.appliedcompositionality.com/

• The Wolfram Physics Project https://www.wolframphysics.org/
• Stephen Wolfram’s announcement of the project https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2...

• Max Piskunov https://www.wolframphysics.org/people...
• SetReplace on GitHub https://github.com/maxitg/SetReplace

Concepts mentioned by Jonathan

• Irreducibility https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Computa...
• Undecidability https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Undecid...
• Universality https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Univers...

• Current algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current...
• Regge theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regge_t...
• Gauge theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_t...
• Standard Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar...

• String theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_...

• Poincaré group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar...

• Mirror symmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_...)
• Calabi–Yau manifold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabi%...
• K3 surface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K3_surface

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Images

• Calabi–Yau manifold https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... by Andrew J. Hanson, Indiana University, who allows use with attribution
• Feynman diagram https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... by Joel Holdsworth, public domain

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