Stephen Wolfram Quotes & Sayings

Well, the first thing to say is that we've worked hard to maintain compatibility, so that any program written with an earlier version of Mathematica can run without change in 3.0, and any notebook can be converted. — Stephen Wolfram

The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress? — Stephen Wolfram

So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature. — Stephen Wolfram

I'm committed to seeing this project done. To see if within this decade we can finally hold in our hands the rule for our universe, and know where our universe lies in the space of all possible universes. — Stephen Wolfram

There are a few very small incompatible changes - I really doubt most people will ever run into them. — Stephen Wolfram

The fact that the same symbolic programming primitives work for those as work for math kinds of things, I think, really validates the idea of symbolic programming being something pretty general. — Stephen Wolfram

It has been proven that the universe is computationally equivalent to my ego. — Stephen Wolfram

It is perhaps a little humbling to discover that we as humans are in effect computationally no more capable than cellular automata with very simple rules. But the Principle of Computational Equivalence also implies that the same is ultimately true of our whole universe.
So while science has often made it seem that we as humans are somehow insignificant compared to the universe, the Principle of Computational Equivalence now shows that in a certain sense we are at the same level as it is. For the principle implies that what goes on inside us can ultimately achieve just the same level of computational sophistication as our whole universe. — Stephen Wolfram

The most important precedents deal with the whole idea of symbolic programming - the notion of setting up symbolic expressions that can represent anything one wants, and then having functions that operate on both their structure and content. — Stephen Wolfram

You kind of alluded to it in your introduction. I mean, for the last 300 or so years, the exact sciences have been dominated by what is really a good idea, which is the idea that one can describe the natural world using mathematical equations. — Stephen Wolfram

It's always seemed like a big mystery how nature, seemingly so effortlessly, manages to produce so much that seems to us so complex. Well, I think we found its secret. It's just sampling what's out there in the computational universe. — Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica and is widely regarded as the most important innovator in scientific and technical computing today. — Stephen Wolfram

Rocks are computationally equivalent to humans. — Stephen Wolfram

If I can't understand something, then it's probably nonsense. — Stephen Wolfram

All the wonders of our universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet ... there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold. — Stephen Wolfram

I want to know the truth, however perverted that may sound. — Stephen Wolfram