History of Science and Technology Q&A (May 1, 2024)

Stephen Wolfram hosts a live and unscripted Ask Me Anything about the history of science and technology for all ages. Find the playlist of Q&A's here: wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Originally livestreamed at: / stephen_wolfram
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[@mntlblok]

How cool would it be to get to hang with Stephen and pick his brain any time you felt the urge? Really appreciate his overview of history and how it meshes with the history of science, and especially how he's willing to share it. The Mendel story and how it could have been completely skipped over (had there been no "literature search") and how that has similarities with Turin is cool. Such great insights. Hadn't known of a second Sadi Carnot being president of France, but *had* known of Poincaré's cousin being president of France during WW1. Just wish I had his ease with math. That lack of country boundaries is under-appreciated for categorizing things. Recently tried to make sense of Germany and Prussia historically. . .

[@duggydo]

I learn something new every time I listen to one of these videos. I had never known that the Cosmic Microwave Background defined a center of mass of the universe. I have heard many other people say there is no center. I’ve always had a hard time with that.

[@mntlblok]

So now I have to ponder caloric fluid's relation to the luminiferous aether. :-) Hadn't thought about them disappearing around the same era. :-)

[@cloudstorage9026]

Fuck yeah.

[@Dessoxyn]

Good! Now I can point out how fucking funny von Neumann would have found it that one of his "organs" comes in either floppy or hard types.

[@siddfinch6296]

forgive me if its my poor memory but was it not Robert Hooke responsible for the early experiments on air and everyone elses experiments at that time. the glass vacuum chamber created by hooke was the beginning of modern science.

[@kxqe]

I always thought that mathematics was built on numbers.

[@Dessoxyn]

1:05:32 Hey brainiac, if it was in Latin it wouldn't have been "Odysseyus" ;) I don't know what this might unleash, but screw it, here's how you combine about 3 millennia of unique geniuses. Quite a few. Here we go: Stephen "Dedalus" Wolfram